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  www.customsolutions.us Issue 30: February 2007
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  Improve Your Productivity by Improving your Work Habits!
Our Custom Typing Training web site provides everything you need to speed up your typing and improve your productivity.  There is no software to download, and you can try it for free!  For details, go to www.customtyping.com

Developing good work habits can set you up for years of productive, pain free work and recreation using computers.  Following proper ergonomic principles will ensure your productivity is maximized without sacrificing your health.  Here are some quick tips that involve your work habits:

  • Vary tasks and break up repetitive routine tasks: Learn to pace yourself with any activity you are doing that involves physical movement or static body postures. Excessive, frequent, repetitive movement is not good for any joint. Likewise, keeping your joints in the same position, especially in a weight bearing position (as in sitting or standing), places strain on the joint and ligaments. A combination of movement and static posture at various times is best for your body.
  • Take frequent breaks - stand up, stretch, walk around: If you need to be working at the computer for long periods of time, make time to get up and move around. Stand up, stretch and breathe in deeply. Movement allows for muscles and tissues to reposition, and for blood to flow freely. Moving around will also help with reducing fatigue and improve your energy and endurance.
  • Shift your posture frequently: Changes in seated posture for working can be extremely beneficial. While working, move from resting on the backrest of the chair into a more upright and forward flexed position (closer to the work surface), place your feet at different places on the floor, move your seated position on the bottom of the chair etc. Small changes in position while you are sitting working can alter weight bearing and reduce the pressure or strain on specific joints and muscle groups.
  • Joint movement exercises: Active large movements of your joints has significant benefits to increasing blood flow, reducing pressure areas and reducing muscle and joint strain. If possible, during rest and movement periods away from the keyboard, do some large range movement of your arms, hands, neck and legs.

Our Custom Typing Training web site includes a complete section on ergonomics.  To go directly to our ergonomics section, click on the link below:

http://www.customtyping.com/tutorials/erg/ergonomics.htm

  Tip of the Week: Enlarging your Text Size when it's too Small to Read

Do you sometimes encounter a program or web site which uses very small fonts that are hard to read? There are a number of things you can do to fix this problem. For web sites, go to Internet Explorer's "View" menu, click on "Text Size", and choose a size that is larger than the current size. Note that this will not work on all web sites, because web authors do have the ability to lock the font size that is shown on their web pages.

Many programs provide a zoom or magnification setting to allow you to adjust the size of the text that is displayed in the current document. Look for this setting somewhere under the "View" menu, or on one of the toolbars that appears just below the menus.

The Windows Display control panel provides some other options as well. To access this control panel, right click on an unused area of your desktop and choose "Properties", or look for it in the Control Panels area under the Start menu. Once you've opened the Display control panel, click on the "Appearance" tab and increase the font size to large or extra large.

If these tricks are not sufficient, you can also try reducing your screen resolution. This will reduce your overall desktop area, giving you less room to work and allowing less to fit on the screen, but may be better than suffering from eye strain. From the Display control panel, click on the "Settings" tab and move the slider under "Screen Resolution" to the left. We don't recommend setting the resolution lower than 800x600, because many web sites are not designed to accommodate resolutions lower than this. You may need to play around to find the right balance of screen resolution and readability.

 

Looking for a new job?

Prove your typing speed to potential employers by taking our online typing test, and receive an official certificate with your results.  For details, go to: www.ProveMySpeed.com

 

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