SmartGlove For Bloggers

In this post I’m going to share with you my secret blog­ging weapon. I have spent the last 2–3 years using a com­puter almost non­stop.  After start­ing up Enlight­ened Web­Mas­tery, as well as con­tin­u­ing my  free­lance work, I have (on sev­eral occa­sions) spent 20+ hours at a com­puter a day. Obvi­ously this is not good.

After I wrote Word­Press Foun­da­tions (I did so on my lap­top on a table) my wrists started killing me.  It was so bad I had to stop work­ing out, I couldn’t write for almost a month, and my free­lance work suf­fered greatly. (I’ve spent many days using a com­puter, but never have I spent so long on my lap­top, the strain on my wrists were unbe­liev­ably painful.) By Decem­ber, my wrists were feel­ing bet­ter, but they still hurt after a pro-longed typ­ing period of a few hours.

I’ve since cut back on a lot of things I enjoy (writ­ing posts, arti­cles, post­ing on forums, writ­ing copy, etc) as well as com­pletely elim­i­nat­ing things I enjoy (gam­ing, draw­ing, 3D mod­el­ing, gui­tar) and I now take a lengthy break from using the com­puter each day. Last month I started work on a new book, as well as put some fin­ish­ing touches on an on-going course (this is all besides my nor­mal work), and my wrists really started killing me (I now avoid using exer­cise bikes, due to the stress on my wrists).

I knew I had to do some­thing to elim­i­nate this pain so I can con­tinue doing what I love. After I wrote Word­Press Foun­da­tions I com­pletely switched up my envi­ron­ment.  I sold my lap­top, and now just use my Mac Pro.  I bought a big­ger desk (one with room for a key­board) and a com­puter chair. (Treat­ing my work envi­ron­ment very seri­ously) I bought a Log­itech Wave Key­board (great key­board, and much bet­ter than the Apple Key­board that I bought) and got out my eXact­Mat X Con­trol mouse pad.

Using the com­puter was less painful, but this still wasn’t enough.  Luck­ily, last month I found out about the Smart­Glove from a friend. After I read the web­site I just knew I had to get them, I ordered a pair and eagerly awaited their arrival. I’ve used the gloves for a few weeks now and the dif­fer­ence is huge.  I can type  longer with­out dis­com­fort, and I notice when I take the gloves off (or for­get to put them on in the morn­ing) I feel the pain much quicker.

With­out these gloves, I’m sure I would not be typ­ing this right now, not to men­tion the 30k+ words I’ve wrote over the past few days. I now plan on spend­ing no more than 2–3 hours on the com­puter at a time (with an hour long or longer break) and no more than 6–8 hours a day using a com­puter.  When­ever I use a com­puter I will do so with these gloves, and when I’m rest­ing or read­ing, I will be wear­ing a brace (until the pain subsides).

Relieve The Pain

Here is a quick set of steps you can do to help alle­vi­ate your pain: Buy an egg timer, and use the com­puter for no more than 2 hours. If you’re read­ing a large arti­cle, con­sider print­ing it out, or read­ing it on a dif­fer­ent device (iPhone, Kin­dle, Sony Reader, etc).

If you watch train­ing videos on your com­puter, con­sider out­putting the video to your TV and sit­ting some­where besides your desk (you can out­put video from your graph­ics card, or stream media using a device such as an AppleTV, Xbox 360, or PS3). After 2 hours of using the com­puter, take a 15–20 minute break.

Stretch your hands, stretch your arms, your back, etc. Work from a desk and keep your elbows par­al­lel to the floor, or stand up (and stand on a gel floor pad). Use a mobile device (such as an ipod, black­berry, or iphone) to send emails, as you can’t type as much and it forces you to be more concise.

Con­clu­sion

I hope this post has helped you, and I hope you con­sider buy­ing these gloves (or some­thing sim­i­lar).  I’ll admit, they are the geeki­est thing I own, and I look like a dork wear­ing them, but if I wasn’t wear­ing them, I wouldn’t be typ­ing this right now. The gloves have a gel pad attached to them (think of a gel mouse pad) as well as a brace at the top that keeps your wrists from extend­ing past a cer­tain point.

The gloves I have are not reversible (like the web­site men­tions), and I bought one for each hand (didn’t think it was nec­es­sary, but after I typed for 2–3 hours, I noticed pain creep­ing in on my left hand).

If you plan on spend­ing any amount of time using the com­puter, go ahead and buy these gloves now (or some­thing very sim­i­lar) and plan on tak­ing  breaks (I use an egg timer that rings every 2 hours, when the timer rings, I get up, leave the com­puter, stretch and do some­thing else for 15–20 min­utes, then come back or do some­thing else for a longer break). You can find out more about the Imak Smart­Glove by click­ing the link.

I bought mine off eBay (as I didn’t know how good they would be), and if some­thing goes wrong with this pair, I will buy my next set from Ama­zon.  The ones from Ama­zon con­tain thumb sup­port (very impor­tant as the ones I have aggra­vate my thumb).

Tagged as: Blog, ergonomics