Ask HN: What do you wish you knew before you got RSI?

- In many cases, RSI can only be managed, not cured

- Regular physical fitness like doing weight training, push-ups, and pull-ups (if you can manage those) can help greatly

- Swimming is one of the best exercises if you have access to a pool since it is zero-body impact. Look at Total Immersion’s “Swim like a Fish”

- Your greatest asset is your ability to produce income for yourself and your family. RSI forces you to preserve that asset, even if degraded

- Playing guitar, tennis, piano, even bowling will become activities that you can no longer partake in

- Those damn key combinations (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) when done with one hand if you are lazy are really bad and can cause RSI to flare up

- Foam rollers are one of the cheapest and therapeutic things you can do for yourself

- Not taking the ability to type for granted will gift you a glimpse at a long-term perspective on life

- Like diets, there is no one-size fits all solution. Try out before you are sold.

- If you have pain or soreness after a binge of coding and it goes away after a night of rest, that is a warning sign. Eventually the recovery periods will lengthen. And eventually there will be no true recovery, but a baseline pain/soreness

- It takes many years to get RSI but you can do it quicker if you pound away at the keyboard day and night. Same for video games

- RSI will become just another part of your life. You will manage. You will survive. You just won’t go bowling.

I developed RSI around 1996, when I was doing lots of fine mask work in Photoshop. I tried lots of things to reduce the pain, including one of the early “vertical” mouses. But the only strategy that worked was switching to my left hand (more effectively distributing the workload), something that works for me to this day. I’ve had zero flare-ups since ~1997, though I can still occasionally feel wrist stress in my dominant hand when it’s in a non-resting position for too long. For that I wish I’d been more mindful, and used my non-dominant hand earlier, before I was forced to. I just thought I could push my way through.

How to avoid getting RSI. Duh!

I'm glad that you have had no flareups for so long! unfortunately my symptoms seem to be keyboard, not mouse related (I am right handed and use my mouse with right hand, but pain is in my left) so I doubt I can just switch sides.