May 27 2007
How to Use a Mouse Correctly
It’s no secret. People with careers in the computer industry tend to be unhealthy. This may have a lot to do with the sedentary lifestyle of their profession. The real fault of poor health is our education system. In school, we learned how to play sports in our physical education classes and very little attention was placed on personal health. Becoming an expert in dodge ball doesn’t give you the life skills to maintain good health. A better approach in these gym classes would be teach students how to exercise and eat well instead of constantly playing team sports.
One health issue which confronts computer users are repetitive stress injuries (RSI). I find that most people use a mouse incorrectly. This may lead to pains in your wrist, hand, or arm while using a mouse or later when your not. When the pain becomes bad enough, a quick solution seems to be switching to a track ball or touch pad. This isn’t necessary. You can continue using a mouse if you use it correctly.
A common way of using a mouse is resting your wrist or forearm on the table and moving it with your hand. A mouse should never be moved this way because it will lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. Instead, you need to move your entire arm when you move the mouse. I have to admit that its difficult initially but it can become a natural action if you keep doing it.
You can switch to a different pointing device, but will every computer you use have it? Mice are everywhere and you will be using them, so its important to learn how to use one properly and not ruin your health.
Mar 16, 2009 @ 10:13:57
I have heard before that you should use your whole arm to control the mouse, but I could never break my old habit of resting my wrist on the table and controlling the mouse with my hand and wrist only. I would always get lazy or tired and return to my old habit. So, I eventually realized what I needed to do. In the past I’ve always liked to increase the mouse pointer speed to reduce the amount of movement required to move the arrow around. But I noticed that the standard setting when you get a new computer is for the mouse pointer speed to be much slower. This default speed must have been set assuming you will use your whole arm to control the mouse. So I realized that I needed to slow the pointer speed back down (even to a very slow setting) to force myself to use my whole arm to control the mouse. At this slow speed it is ridiculous to try to control the mouse with your wrist resting on the table. So my advise to anyone who is dealing with this same issue is to slow down the mouse pointer speed.