My right wrist started bothering me a few weeks ago — too much mousing, and too much videogaming!
I started wearing a wrist brace, but that only provided temporary relief.
I tried operating my mouse with my left hand, but that was surprisingly frustrating.
I tried voice mousing (with IBM’s ViaVoice software), but that was even more frustrating.
I took a quick look on the internet at a head-mounted mouse and a foot-operated mouse, but those options were prohibitively expensive (and could well turn out to be at least as frustrating as left-handed mousing).
But then inspiration struck — I plugged a *second* USB mouse into my computer, and tried using my right hand to point, and my left hand to click, drag, and scroll.
All of a sudden, the stress on my right wrist was history! And I experienced *none* of the left-handed mousing frustration.
(However, I’ll let you know if I develop tendinitis in *both* wrists…)
There’s one really cool side benefit, btw — if you do any drawings on your computer (using Visio or whatever), you will find that two-handed mousing is *much* steadier than one-handed mousing in situations where you have to “click, hold, and drag.”
A few more thoughts:
- If you want to give this a try, you might want to disable ”pointing” for the lefthand mouse. (If it has a rollerball, take the ball out. If it’s an optical mouse, mask the red light with a piece of paper or masking tape.)
- If you don’t have a second mouse (or room for a second mouse on your desk), you can achieve a similar result by using the *free* utility AutoHotKey. For example, you can map the left mouse button to your F1 key, and the right mouse button to your F2 key, both of which you will operate with your left hand.
- I find that two-handed mousing works best if you can fully support your forearms with armrests, but experiment to see what configuration works best for you.
Good luck!
