For example, there's the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, you should spend 20 seconds looking at something that is 20 feet away to rest your eyes. Or the rule of thumb that every 20 minutes you should spend 5 minutes doing something besides using your computer to rest your hands. ("Make a phone call or go get a drink.")
Sorry, but I don't have 24 phone calls to make every day. What I do have is a huge problem with distractibility and I don't think that interupting my work every 20 minutes is going to help.
Tonight I'm in my office finishing revisions on a paper that has to be resubmitted today. Or sometime before the editor, who lives on the east coast, gets to work tomorrow. I guess that puts my deadline somewhere around 5am Pacific Time.
Anyway, I'm tired and my eyes hurt, so I decided to set my computer alarm to tell me to go for a 5-minute walk every hour. And you know what? It's actually helping me feel better and it's probably helping me to avoid twisting every muscle in my back and neck into a gnarled mess from sitting hunched in front of my computer without a break for 10 hours.
Now, if I could just hire a massage therapist with my research budget...
3 comments:
Brilliant! They should really let us do that.
Although I'm still just hoping they'll let me buy a laptop with it one day.
P.S. It's pretty cool that you went to the workshop. Good job taking action!
Back when my back was hurting a lot a few years ago I got these stretches from my doctor, and since they mostly involved lying down on the floor I did them almost every day for a year!
Devin,
I thought you guys had unlimited funds to buy pretty much anything vaguely related to research. Don't you 'need' a laptop to do research at home?
I ordered my office computer on Oct. 25th and it's still not here. I'm going to strangle someone in the purchasing department if it doesn't show up in the next few days (they keep promising me delivery dates that are further and further in the future...the last one was December 14th...yeah, right).
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