How do you avoid RSI injuries

related: "Ask HN: What do you wish you knew before you got RSI?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23561926, "Ask HN: How do you take care of your hands?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21046033, "Ask HN: Best Mouse for Avoiding RSI" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20689309

Switch Caps Lock to CTRL. Also, learn to touch type so you can place your fingers on the keyboard properly.

1. Laptop in lap and ass in comfy chair...the kind of chair that you would sit in to binge watch Netflix in your living room. It's just another screen. The ergonomics allow shifting my weight and adjusting my relationship to the screen and the angle of my hands to the keyboard. My favorite is an Ikea Poang chair with footstool.

2. Keyboard with Ctl and Alt on both sides of the space bar. Then I can use one hand for Ctl and/or Alt and the other hand to press a key.

3. Item 2 is an optimization for Emacs picked up from Xah Lee's ErgoEmacs...which means I try to use Emacs key bindings whenever practical.

4. Laptop has a touchpad. I don't use mice because that screws up two handed Ctl and Alt shortcuts. Pointing sticks are also good if you have a Thinkpad (and Thinkpads are the best because not only are their Ctl and Alt keys on both sides of the space bar, they are symmetrical (my Dell has an Fn key between Ctl and Alt on the left side of the space bar)).

5. Barring a laptop, I like the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard...again in my lap. But my Unicomp EnduraPro has symetrical keys, buckling springs, and a built in pointing stick which means I don't need a mouse and so it's even better.

6. One of the big things about putting a keyboard in my lap is it avoids pressure points where my wrist rests on the edge of the desk. This is the biggest source of discomfort for me going back more than twenty years. The first solution was a plastic folding table as a desk with a ~1" radiused edge back in the early 00's. But keyboard in lap is simply better and laptop in lap and ass in comfy chair is even better.

7. One of the big things for me is recognizing when I'm having discomfort early -- it's amazing what I am able to ignore if I try -- and adjusting my position slightly for the next few days. That took a long time to learn because I was trying to sit at a desk with a keyboard and mouse on the desk and that's fundamentally broken...which reminds me that standing desks have most of the same issues for me as sitting desks in terms of keyboard position and the display position is worse...again, for me.

8. When I notice pain I stretch my arms and wrist tendons. The arms by doing whatever feels like it's stretching, the wrist tendons by extending my arm palm down and pulling back and upward on the fingers with the other hand.

Being mostly self-employed for the past thirty years, I don't have the privilege of claiming RSI. Sometimes it just hurts and so I do what it takes to reduce the hurt and keep working. But that also means I can work in a comfy chair with a keyboard in my lap without a manager managing me for the sake of conformity.

Good luck.