Mouse clicks, I got 'em!
grand marshal polycounter
The difference between a slack day and a busy day for us office workers: how many times we click the mouse. "My day was super busy today, I clicked my mouse 100 times more than average." That's a joke, don't dissect it too much!
Maybe I wasn't working hard enough at my last few jobs, but since I've become an artist, I'm having some issues with my hand and wrist. After 4 or 5 hours of using a tablet, my wrist starts to ache. After clicking a mouse for 8 or 9 hours, the back of my hand starts to hurt.
I've started trying to draw by moving my shoulder more than my wrist, and that is helping slightly. I've also lowered the sensitivity of my mouse in an attempt to get larger movements (with my shoulder), instead of tiny movements.
Does anybody have any other tips on how to avoid pain/RSI/arthritis/early retirement?
Replies
For 2 years in my absence i was studying the effects of "food", on the body (cause i have my own issues i wanted to fix and i did) i found out a lot about what certain foods do to my body. Idk if it does the same thing for everyone but, any aches and pains are caused by inflammation (lacking nutrients that are vital to process synergistic elements, so one works with the other, if you lack 1, the other builds up till you get it into your body) i.e. Stored somewhere, where? joints, ect. which = aches and pains you are having, neck pain, wrist pain, hip pains, knee pains (can't run), shoulder pains, head aches, ect. list goes on. For me food is basically #1 i now understand what you put in you get out.
Animal nutrition is big for us, not going to say its the only one but generally 75% should be from some form of animal.
To figure it out for everyone, you start with your favorite meal, then try to stretch that 1 meal in to 3 meals throughout the day, for me its c0w. I make 3 meals out of that, right do that for 1 or two weeks, see how you feel. Do things go away? do they get worse? write it down on a notepad or some food log. You clear those foods in the list of things you can have.
so for me c0w = no issues, then i want to add in, pancakes for breakfast, for 1 week, so i lose 1 of the 3 meals i already have, i already know c01 doesn't give me any issues so if i add in pancake (plain, butter,egg) no toppings, 1 week if its fine you add in your toppings, 1 week oh i got issues with pancake with a topping (sugar) take it away, wait a week okay all is well. (kind of odd they are attacking c0ws if they are fine for consumption, and again a specific kind of raised c0w not just any c0w, mind you.)
^That is just an example of how to do what i did, i can have pancake but a specific form of flour only, and it does cause inflammations for me (neck aches pains, shoulder pains)
I am still learning about this, i came up with it and decided to share the process countless times now on p.c. can't give anything back 3D wise so this is my attempt at returning the favor of teaching me the ways of the force(3D character modeling).
Good luck if you take this serious if not okay, good luck.
fake meat push should be concerning also they allow for ingriedients NOT TO BE on the LABEL so who knowns what you are eating now.
Edit: to add if you want to lose weight, start running doesn't have to be fast, just do it at least once a week, which is what i did while i went food shopping (ran only 1.5 miles, while i was still drinking i ran drunk-ish once/not sh!t faced, don't drink anymore 2 years sober.), i told myself get it done and i wouldn't have to do it, right so psych yourself out like that and you will get anything done, tell your lazy asses to just get it out of the way and then you won't have to do it, its what i did. I also work out at the shopping center also, so i take two shopping carts at checkout and put the handle bars to my sides and do body dips on it while i wait for my uber to come get me. (so workout anywhere since they took away the gym...)
Not sure if anyone else has experienced this before, but it's not fun and is really impeding on my ability to do this 3D artsie stuffs. I'm hoping to survey some more advice from this thread from some of you who may have experience with this, but I fear I may have to inevitably resort to a doctor/specialist. I wish I wasn't such a stubborn derposaurus and would've researched preventative measures back when I first knew I was going to be transitioning to a life of sitting at a computer.
Life, man. What a hoot.
At one point I even worked with my left hand for a year (after a year I felt that my left hand was having very similar issues to the right, so I decided to switch back instead of screwing my left hand to the same level as the right one). What I learned from my situation and what helped me to get some control over my problems and continue doing what I like:
1) in any 3d application, do not use the mouse-wheel button for movement/rotation etc. I´m pretty sure that this "crossing" movement of my index finger with pressure applied on the mouse-wheel (clicking and even worse - holding) messed up my hand in the first place. Doesn´t matter that you don´t feel like you need to apply a lot of pressure on the wheel now - you will feel it eventually and it might be too late when you start noticing.
Use keyboard shortcuts when you can instead (for example in Blender I have camera/view rotation, move and zoom dedicated to keys that I hold and just move the mouse - that´s it, huge saver on your right hand) or get used to things like 3ds max viewport orbit. Sure, when you´re healthy you won´t even think about doing that (I wouldn´t either, and a friend of mine who´s experienced only some discomfort won´t listen to my advice at this point as well - waiting for my "I told you so" moment when things get worse...), but once you experience any problem with your hand - do that immediately.
2) For a long period of time I had a second mouse on the side of my keyboard and I used pinky/ring finger (or both) of my left hand for clicking and scrolling the wheel. The point was to avoid any clicking with my right hand (I even tore down the buttons on my right hand mouse so that my hand could rest freely on it and I only used it for moving the cursor around).
The second mouse was duct-taped to lower left corner of my keyboard facing towards me. This way the left mouse button was the closer one to my left hand resting over the keyboard and access to the mouse-wheel was also very comfortable for scrolling (I´m trying to avoid scrolling with my right hand as well, because I usually do that with my index finger - not healthy, similar thing to using the wheel-mouse as a third button) - you just need to get used to the scrolling - up is down, down is up... because the mouse faces the other direction than usually. Laser on this mouse was of course covered/duct-taped - this is just a "clicking" mouse, you don´t want it to move your cursor around when you click it.
3) Ease of access/sticky keys. Sticky keys is a very useful option for repetitive actions that involve holding shift, alt or ctrl for a longer period of time (working with files or moving around chunks of UV islands during unwraps). A little rest for your keyboard hand won´t hurt as well, so just look for the situations in your workflow when you need to hold shift/alt/ctrl and use this option when you can.
4) you can avoid mouse-clicking with your hands completely when you buy foot pedals - I would recommend having this option to everyone. whenever you feel any discomfort, just use pedals for clicking. Immediate help, it won´t get any easier than this - this solution is so easy and fast that it sounds almost DUMB to say it out loud. I wish I had done this earlier. You might hesitate to buy it because the pedals could be too riggid for you, might get squeaky over time... you´ve probably invested more money into less important things than this and this is probably what you do for living, so just try it...
5) vertical mouse - as stupid as it might sound, I´m pretty sure that even the worst vertical mouse will be better than any regular one for your wrists. I have 3 for my right hand and one for the left hand (the reason why I have so many is simply because whenever I saw a cheap vertical mouse I simply added it to cart - I must say that none of them was a "miss". picked one that I preferred, the others are my backups). Using vertical mouse helped me to such level that I started clicking with my hands instead of pedals again (like I said, it´s in human nature - when you don´t feel any discomfort, you´ll do what feels easier/more natural...). I can imagine that people are not sure about vertical mouse because they never tried it. same thing as with the pedals - try one, even if it won´t be perfect match for your hand size, the new, more natural posture for your wrist will help you.
6) exercising - in my situation, my wrists are somehow messed up. I can´t do regular push-ups anymore. I can do push-ups on my fists or fingers - the wrists will hurt eventually, but there is no immediate pain and I can do that. but I can´t even lean on my hands when I´m on my palms. I figured that my problem is in the pressure on my wrist, so I tried pull-ups. Doing pull-ups really helped me with my wrists, releasing some tension I felt in the wrist area.
I´ve probably forgotten some things that I´ve tried over the years, but these are the general points that helped me a lot. To sum it up, you should use vertical mouse + foot pedals to go easier on your hands, because these are the things that you can avoid doing wrong. You can´t really substitute wacom pen, but your regular mouse and clicking? These things you can substitute, so do that and save your hands for using wacom pen. I couldn´t even take a few short notes on a piece of paper with a regular pen for years, so save your hands whenever you can.