A Typical Case of Mediamonitoringitis
I’m not talking about hurting your reputation, hurting your bottom line or hurting your feelings. I mean injuries. Literally. Physically.
I’ve done media monitoring for 8 years now. It involves a lot of typing and a lot of clicking. I started wearing a wrist brace (a cute gray and pink one for girls) years ago when I got mouse-thumb reminiscent of the aches caused by 16 hours of Zelda. The wrist brace is amazing. I force all of our analysts to wear them prophylactically to avoid getting to the point where they have pain. And it really works…
Sadly, it turns out that I have a whole other hand to bang up. When I lost feeling in my pinky and ring finger, I googled it (duh) and found that it is a common result of putting weight on your elbow. You know how you put your elbow on the desk and rest your head in your hand? Stop doing that. I stopped doing that. It still didn’t go away so I went to the doctor.* She said there are other ways to tick off that nerve that runs across your elbow – your “funny bone” – besides leaning on it. One of those ways is banging on the keyboard for 12 hours a day for 10 years. Huh.
The doctor ordered me to give up keyboards and mice for at least 5 days to give my hand a rest. When I got home, I got on the computer (oops) to research workstation ergonomics. I had to find some organization of equipment that would let me keep working without pain and injury. Then I looked down at my keyboard and saw…
WARNING! To reduce risk of serious injury, read Safety & Comfort Guide provided with product and at www.hp.com/ergo
Seriously? I’ve had this computer for 2 years and I have NEVER noticed that before. So I went there. I went to the CDC.
Your Computer Is Trying to Tell You Something
I went to OSHA. I went to the freaking Department of Defense (they like white papers). I found a ton of information. Most of it is stuff I had heard or read before but I wasn’t actually doing. My office chair was not in an ideal position. I was using a laptop instead of a separate keyboard. I rest my wrists on the keyboard while typing.
I’m sure that many of you reading have similar habits and it doesn’t really seem like a big deal because your fingers haven’t been asleep for a month. But you might think about not letting it get to that point. If you do media monitoring, you are doing a lot of typing. You’re clicking, you’re copying, you’re commenting. You’re probably asking your hands to do things they weren’t designed or conditioned to do.
It would be silly to tell you to stop monitoring your media coverage (we still want your money), but there are little changes you can make to ensure that you can do it comfortably for a long time. I think OSHA has the best resources, including a thorough checklist you can use to make sure you have a good set-up. Happy Clicking.
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*Please visit your physician should you lose feeling in any body part(s).
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Keyboard photo: BennyLin0724
Hand photo: N1NJ4
