Why every PC nerd should care about ergonomics

Do your hands, wrists, or shoulders ache after you get up from your PC? Don’t ignore it. Those minor grumbles can be the early warning signs of serious repetitive stress injuries that can impact you for the rest of your life.

I know because it happened to me after spending years working and playing on computers. I’m 41, and for nearly a decade I’ve tried all sorts of things to deal with the pain that creeps into my hands and wrists after just a few minutes at a keyboard. Along the way, I’ve learned what helps.

We talked a bit about cool ergonomic keyboards and other PC accessories on this week’s edition of The Full Nerd, so I thought I’d take a moment to dig deeper in the newsletter and offer advice from my own journey managing chronic pain from nerd-induced repetitive stress injuries.

First, take a moment to analyze how your body works when you’re at your PC. I don’t know about you, but that’s tricky for me because when I’m really in the zone on a writing project (or a Marathon session), I completely lose track of my body and what it’s doing.

Are your wrists sharply turned outward to keep your hands in line with the keyboard? Are your shoulders tense? Are you sitting in a position that feels comfortable now, but could become painful after years of repetition? These small habits can add up.

Everybody’s body is different, but these are the mistakes I made over 25 years of hardcore PC use. Working with ergonomic consultants and investing a few hundred bucks in decent ergonomic equipment, I was able to make meaningful reductions in my daily pain without losing the ability to work at a PC, which at one point I felt sure was going to happen.

A proper ergonomic keyboard, vertical mouse (or trackball), standing desk, and supportive chair might have saved me years of discomfort.

That’s why I was glad when our special guest (and former correspondent) Hayden Dingman brought some of his favorite ergonomic PC equipment on The Full Nerd this week—it gave us a chance to remind younger viewers that even if it doesn’t hurt you to use a keyboard or gamepad now, there’s a non-zero chance it will hurt in the future. So if you want to be browsing, creating, and gaming on your PC for the next couple of decades, it’s a really smart idea to start taking care of your body right now.

That starts with being honest about how you care for your body when you’re sitting, standing, or lounging at your PC. If you have the time, money, and inclination, there are ergonomic consultants you can hire (like the Ergo Lady here in San Francisco) who can provide advice tailored to your unique workspace through remote assessments or in-person visits. Even if you can’t afford (or don’t want) to hire an expert, small changes to your PC setup can make it more ergonomic.

Personally, I found relief once I upgraded to a standing desk from Uplift, a more supportive ergonomic chair from Mavix, a good split ergonomic keyboard from ZSA, and a big comfy trackball mouse from Elecom. You may instead prefer a vertical ergonomic mouse like the Razer Pro Click V2 that Hayden showed off on The Full Nerd this week, especially if you play a lot of PC games.

The desk and chair are more expensive than the PC accessories, so if money is tight, I’d start with the most affordable upgrades first. If I’d wanted to make changes right away while saving up for a nice desk and chair, I’d have invested in a cheap $100 standing desk or desk conversion kit that lets me quickly switch from sitting to standing at my existing desk. That would have let me get used to working while standing while spending less time in an unsupportive chair.

Even if you can’t afford to do much, every little ergonomic improvement you can make will pay huge dividends throughout your life. But, more than anything, the number one ergonomic gadget I recommend is probably already on your phone: a timer.

By setting a timer and forcing yourself to take 15-minute stretch breaks at regular intervals (every 30 to 45 minutes) to get up, walk around, and stretch a bit, you’ll immediately start feeling better. I know it can seem like a hassle—I definitely struggle to stick with my break schedule when I’m rolling on something. But after a few days it always feels worth it. When I forget to stretch for a week or two, I can start to feel my hands, wrists, and shoulders tightening up.

Take my word for it, as someone who’s had to learn all this the hard, painful way. Everything you do today to take better care of your body will make a difference even if you don’t notice it right away. The best outcome is that you’ll never notice the full extent of how much it helps. With the right care and support, you may never have to face the repetitive aches and pains that hound old PC dogs like me!

In this episode of The Full Nerd

This week on The Full Nerd we welcomed back friend of the show and former correspondent Hayden Dingman to chat about the future of game consoles, the death of physical media, and the world of ergonomic hardware.

To that end, he kindly brought some cool gadgets for show and tell, including the aforementioned Razer vertical mouse, the new Steam Controller, and (my personal favorite) a slick Dygma Raise 2 split ergonomic keyboard. Alaina also brought in her Gold Touch ergonomic keyboard and offered some clutch advice for getting used models for cheap.

Nerd news of the week

Amid all the doom and gloom about the price of hardware and the death of discs, you can still find some cool news in tech this week:

• Copy That Floppy! A guide to floppy disk preservation: This is a super-cool look at how you go about preserving disk images of 3-inch to 8-inch floppy disks, replete with expert interviews and links to workshops and other preservation communities to check out.
• Meta’s glasses to turn off camera if privacy light is tampered with: There’s been concern about smartglasses wearers surreptitiously recording in public since the days of Google Glass, and now that folks have figured out how to disable the recording light in Meta Glasses the company is taking steps to make sure the camera is disabled when such tampering is detected.
• Two teens learn the hard way not to do toy gun drive-bys from a Waymo: Turns out, committing crimes in the back of a driverless vehicle equipped with cameras is a bad idea! That’s what two 15-year-olds found out this week when the San Mateo police came and fished them out of a Waymo after the car snitched on the teens drinking and shooting toy guns out of the back seat.
• This is the first dog tracker powered by Starlink satellites: If you’re comfortable with Musk’s Starlink satellites tracking your pet, this new Fi Ultra collar can now keep tabs on them almost anywhere in the world—even in areas with zero to no cell or GPS coverage.
• Uniqlo hid an easter egg in a bash script printed on a t-shirt: Akamai Technologies worked with Uniqlo to design a t-shirt with a bash script that launched this year as part of a charity campaign, and nerds around the world have decoded the script to find it actually compiles into a lovely little message.

That’s all from me this week, but make sure to bookmark PCWorld and check back regularly for more nerd news you can (hopefully) use!

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.