Years ago, I had wrist issues. After a certain point, they would just constantly hurt. Since then I’ve always tried to iterate on my desk setup each year. I sit at my computer typing a lot; investing in the tools I use every day always made a bunch of sense.

I’ve spent time & money researching, purchasing, testing, etc various tools to improve my desk setup to eliminate pain.

Notes from an Ergonomic Consultation

One of the neat things my BigTech job provided was a session with an ergonomic consultant. Here are some notes:

• The screen should be at arm’s length from your body. Most likely, you should pull your screen closer to your face.
• The knees should be at or below the hip level. This means your desk and chair should sit lower.
• When typing, using the mouse, etc., elbows should be as 90-degree angles as possible. This may seem unnatural compared to what you are used to.
  • Recommended seat height is 18"
• For me (5’7"), 42" is the best height for my standing desk without my treadmill.
• After adjusting my monitor height, 47" feels like the right height for the desk when standing.
• It’s obvious, but you don’t want a keyboard or mouse that causes your wrists to bend.
• Side monitors can cause you to turn your neck too much. It’s better to get one massive monitor.

My Tools

Here’s what has worked for me in order of effectiveness:

1. Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. There are a couple of different models, but they are basically all the same. Unfortunately, Microsoft has recently sold off this hardware business and licensed the designs to Incase, which has yet to start selling new models.
2. Monitor stand so your head is looking straight ahead vs down or up. The trick here is you want to get something high enough that you can adjust it so you aren’t tilting your neck. This sounds obvious, but most monitor arms to not do this. I had to buy an extra "tall" version in order to get the monitor high enough.
3. Sit/stand desk. The Ikea $400 model is pretty good, I used it for years before my time in BigTech gave me a budget to buy a fancy one (UpDesk). If you are going to get the UpDesk, you may as well buy the largest model. I end up using all of the space.
   • Once you have a sit stand desk, it’s important to calculate the correct height. Use this calculator to figure out the best sit & stand position:
4. Treadmill for underneath your desk. This is helpful because it forces you NOT to slouch (hard to do while you are walking!). Bonus is you get a workout while working. These have gotten so cheap: if you setup a price alert on keepa, you can get this for < $150.
   • Bonus here is getting a rucksack. It ends up feeling like quite the workout, even if you just use it for 1-2 hours.
5. Vertical mouse. This seems to make some difference, although I felt fine with a magic mouse.

Things I’ve tried that were not helpful:

• Mousepad with a little wrist bump thing. Did not work for me.
• Cushioned standing pad. Didn’t seem to help, especially if you are wearing shoes.
• Balance board. Found it distracting and ended up not using it.
• Kinesis 360. The layout is just too crazy for me. I tried a couple times but couldn’t get used to it, especially once I realized if I did get used to it I assumed I would struggle to use my laptop keyboard when I travelled.