RSI

• Keeping your wrists in a "neutral" position: ie hands, wrists and arms all in a straight line.  One significant aid in this is moving to a natural (split) keyboard, which at least AlexChurchill, DouglasReay and ColinT have found helpful.
  
• Having a wrist rest for use during pauses between typing, and/or a mouse mat with integrated wrist rest
  
• Not resting wrists on the wrist rest while actually typing - you should hold them above the keyboard, forearms parallel with the ground
  
• Regular breaks, e.g. enforced by software
  
  • in AC's case, RSIGuard
    
  • Rjk uses [xwrits]
    
  • Mjb67 uses a cron-timed xmessage to tell him to take a break. 
    
  • MoonShadow takes a break whenever his coffee cup is empty.
    

  Giggle. For AC it was the other way round: starting taking regular breaks led directly to a sharp increase in coffee consumption as I wondered what to do off the computer for six minutes...
  

  It caused PeterTaylor to take up juggling again and finally get the hang of it.
  

  This does display the problem that if you're concentrating harder then you aren't drinking as much coffee, but are typing lots -- Senji
  

  • Vitenka uses WorkPlace? which pops up regular 'take a break' messages.  And just got a very amusing one:
    

• SGB uses [workrave], which locks you out and displays stretches for you.  It'll even communicate with other instances if you use more than one computer.
  
• AutoClick? software
  
• Getting a decent keyboard.
  
• Use a sensible keyboard layout like Dvorak or Maltron.
  
  • JW switched to Dvorak a year ago, and didn't find it to help much (although he does feel refreshingly more geeky, and it was all worth it for the time that IT couldn't get past the screensaver lock because they couldn't type the admin password on the Qwerty-mapped-to-Dvorak keyboard.)  He's ordered an [UberFancyKeyboard] (through work, of course), and will give a full report once it arrives.
    
• Alternatives to a keyboard for entering text, such as RemoteKeys (lets you enter hundreds of predefined strings with a single click - or a single mouseover, with AutoClick?) or Dasher (lets you enter freeform text by waving your mouse cursor at the moving letters - with practice AlexChurchill got up to about 40wpm with it, IIRC).
  

When reading about RSIAwarenessWeek, I discovered surprising amounts of people saying "RSI is too specific. You should really call them Upper Limb Disorders"... --AlexChurchill

Technically accurate though - RSI refers specifically to a repeated motion (of the wrist).  And really, though the most obvious one, it's not the only problem associated with sitting at a desk all day typing.  So I expect health professionals will baulk at using a specific term in a general way, and eveyrone else will go on doing it.  --Vitenka

Jenn was told it should be called forearm overuse disorder, so as not to aggravate employers unnecessarily. She now has a Maltron lefthanded keyboard. -- ColinT.

She now has the UberFancyKeyboard? mentioned above, too.  But it was at work, so we couldn't have a go on it. :( --M-A

(PeterTaylor) That's a stupid name. Firstly, it's the fingers and wrist which are overused. Secondly, it implies the pain is restricted to the forearms, which isn't true.

IIRC, RSI (standing for RepetitiveStrainInjury?) can apply to any part of the body that is injured through repetitive actions. For instance, your ankle if you listen to music all day and tap your foot to it. However, CarpalTunnelSyndrome? is specific to the wrists. --Admiral

(PeterTaylor) The carpal tunnel is in the wrists, yes. I was never given a term for the RSI problems I had, so it's possible I didn't have CTS, and probable that I had more than CTS. Judging by the location of the pain, there seemed to be inflammation around the tendons for the length of my forearms, and there were about three significant pain sites in my upper arms. That's the main point I wanted to make.