Building an ergonomic workstation

To start, my work area at the time was far from ergonomic. There’s an awful lot to be said about the subject, but the basic idea is that you should maintain a comfortable, relaxed, and proper posture during computer use. This article from the University of Michigan covers many of the major points.

I have a decent office chair, but the rest of my workstation consisted of an IKEA table for a desk, a Das Keyboard 4, and a Logitech Performance MX mouse. The table was far too tall for use as a desk, and had no keyboard tray. The keyboard was nice, but I exerted too much pressure typing on it and (in retrospect) my wrist placement felt awkward.

I knew that the time had come to make a strong investment in my future, and began pursuing a more ergonomic workstation. I now use the following equipment in my every day work:

Uplift standing desk (~$1200): motorized standing desk with keyboard tray, a long warranty, and lots of bells and whistles. Expensive, but hugely beneficial from an ergonomic perspective. Comfortable to use while standing or sitting, with plenty of space for all of my gear.

Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard (~$350): ergonomic, split, mechanical keyboard. I didn’t think I would ever get used to it, but after a month or two, it became a dream to type on.

Logitech MX Ergo Plus trackball (~$100): ergonomic trackball with a stand that allows it to be tilted up to 30 degrees. Although I haven’t had much pain from mouse use, I decided to give a trackball a try and have been pleased with the purchase.

The Uplift desk is amazing. My particular desk is 72x30", and has enough room for three 24" monitors, a stereo receiver, and a large amount of space for notes, paperwork, and documentation. I added a memory control keypad to my desk, so I have presets available for my preferred sitting and standing desk heights. I’d like to buy some monitor mounts so I can fine-tune the positions of my monitors and tidy up their cabling, but I haven’t done that yet.

The Kinesis keyboard’s design is very unusual, but I’ve come to really love it. In fact, it taught me that I had incorrectly learned to type ‘C’ using my index finger instead of my middle finger, and forced me to break that habit. The split design is so much more comfortable for my arms and wrists, and the unique key placement and key “wells” mean less travel per finger when typing. I’ve remapped some frequently used modifier keys (Shift, primarily) to the thumb areas, and I use macros to deal with any awkward key combinations, so I don’t have to contort my hands. I have macros for opening terminals, various tmux and window manager operations, and even starting up my work VPN connection in a background terminal.

Having used this set of equipment for roughly 6 months at the time of writing, I can’t believe I made it this far without it. These items have improved my computer’s usability, but I also wanted to pursue ways to make phone use and video gaming more comfortable:

AmazonBasics stylus (~$8): works great with my Google Pixel. I use it for browsing and swipe-typing (or I just use voice to text) instead of mashing my fingers into the screen (which was surprisingly painful).

PlayStation 4 DualShock 4 controller (~$36): works well for most Steam games (Skyrim, Stardew Valley, Final Fantasy games, etc.), and is much more comfortable for me while gaming than using a mouse and keyboard. Most console controllers are quite comfortable, and since I was never big into FPS games anyway, I don’t mind giving up most mouse and keyboard games.

I can’t say I’m quite free of pain while typing and using a computer at this point, but improving the ergonomic properties of my workstation has made a tremendous difference in my life.