I’ve considered writing a post about the benefits of working from home for RSI sufferers. But it seemed a bit pointless: the benefits are mostly obvious – and if it’s not an option for you, it’s probably not a very useful post. But if you’ve got a sympathetic boss it might be worth discussing, even to do a day a week from home.

Benefits:

• It’s so much easier to get your own setup right at home. Office furniture is terrible. At home I have the perfect setup; a keyboard tray at the correct height; monitors at the correct height. Good chair etc.
• I have all my own ergonomic devices that work for me; various mice/ graphics tablet, goldtouch keyboard
• I have all my exercise tools to hand; powerball, wrist wand, weights.
• Rare that is I can even get completely away from the desk for non computer work, like sketching out a website
• I’m not embarrassed to stand up and do some exercises and stretches or just get away from the computer for a minute
• I think that people factor can be a big one. Just having a different setup etc in an office. It can get quite tiresome in an office every time someone asks you about your strange mouse / keyboard / or what that thing on the screen is telling you to a have  break. Or people telling me my monitors were too high. That was a classic!
• Overall it just seems less stressful working from home.

I’ve definitely had a much better time with RSI since working from home, almost two years now from a combination of everything above and most likely other things I haven’t even considered. Again sorry – if I’m rubbing your nose in it. But if your office is hurting you, it might be an option to request staying away from it now and then. In the very least a change in your setup will do you good.

Seemed topical to write this post today as I have a small spot in an article about working from home in today’s Independant . Was kind of amusing when the photographer came around. First thing he asked me to do was put all keyboard etc up off the keyboard tray beside the monitors. And I did for a second then laughed and had to explain: “Sorry – I actually have a blog about RSI and ergonomics and here I am about to be photographed with the worst setup ever”. He completely understood and we put them back down. Neither did  I want to pose with a laptop. I wouldn’t be caught dead pretending to work on one of those dreaded things.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.