Get separate mouse and keyboard wrist rests.
Use a vertical mouse instead of a traditional one.
Use more than one type of mousing device and switch up from time to time. Graphic tablets with digital pens take some getting used to but are excellent.
Look up RSI forearm stretches and take breaks to stretch your arms and hands for a few moments at least every few hours. I'm also a big fan of gyro ball exercisers.
Get an ergonomic chair with movable arm rests that can keep your arms at around the same height as the desk your working at.
* roller mouse * left hand vertical mouse * right hand vertical mouse * trackpad * foot pedal
That experience made me not want to buy another from them, so I bought the Anker wired vertical mouse for like $12. It lasted for three years, but the scroll wheel started going. Three years for such a cheap and good mouse was acceptable to me so I bought another, but the scroll wheel on the new one started going in less than a year (I’m not gaming with these things and I take good care of them, I just scroll a lot). To their credit, Anker sent me a free replacement with no hassles.
I still have the free replacement as a backup, but decided maybe it was time to try something fancier again, so I bought a Jellycomb wireless vertical mouse for $30 with a really cool split chassis design. The ergonomics were great, but once again the scroll wheel didn’t last.
My most recent purchase (about six months ago) was a Logitech MX Vertical for $94. The build quality is better than all the others and I like it very much except for one thing: the shape of it and the rubberized surface make my hand a bit hotter than I’d like. I’ve mostly gotten used to it, but it’s noticeable.
It costs 5x what the Anker does. Is it 5x better? No. But it is better, and I wanted something that I (hopefully) can keep for more than a few years. Jury’s still out on that front, though.
That’s the main blocker for me buying the Logitech or an Evoluent: aspects like that make me long for a try before you buy at this $100/mouse mark. The extra button is what got me considering the Evoluent over the other options, but they also have a bunch of slightly differing models that makes me even more indecisive. Thank you for your mouse reviews.
An under-appreciated benefit of using a mouse (as a programmer) is that it "switches things up" on your hands so that you aren't doing the same repetitive motions all day long. You can be marginally faster with a mouseless workflow, but you're definitely not very productive when you can't type for months due to RSI.