Did you know that you spend approximately half of your waking hours at your job? Regardless of whether you work in manual labor, as a freelancer, in a service job, or in an office cubicle, your work environment is equally important to your physical and emotional well-being as anywhere else is. Work is full of occupational hazards: stress, screen-time, unhealthy habits, and (potentially) a sedentary lifestyle. However, fear not, there are many things you can do to improve your work environment and, in this series, we will give some examples of ways you can turn your workplace from hum and drum to fab and fun.

There are a ton of weird little gadgets out there which claim to make your office day easier. From USB-powered fans that simulate a fresh breeze or fancy back pillows to help with your posture, to even self-stirring mugs for your daily dosage of caffeine and sugar. These workplace accessories are fun to have but don’t necessarily add to your well being on a daily basis. However, there is quite a useful technical gadget that has made it’s way to quite a few desks here at Amazingy HQ and this is the RollerMouse Red by contour.

What is it?

A Rollermouse? What on earth could that be? Well, it happens to be a great alternative to a traditional mouse and perfect for anyone who often works in front of a computer. That pretty much includes the majority of today’s working population. It was designed to encourage good posture and a natural position of your hands while you are moving the cursor over the screen. Say goodbye to wrist, arm, neck or shoulder pain.

How does it work?

The Rollermouse is a sleek bar that sits right beneath your keyboard. It is supposed to be used with both hands, thus inviting load-sharing between them. You just place your hands on the padded area so your fingers can easily reach the rollerbar, which moves the cursor, and the different buttons, which let you select, copy and paste just with one click. No need for finger acrobatics while trying to reach a key combination. The Rollermouse does everything a normal mouse would, plus a few more things, all while keeping your hands in a natural position.

The Test

I received my very own test unit of the RollerMouse Red in November and was a little skeptical at first. The roller-bar scared me a little to be honest, and I also didn’t dare to use the copy and paste buttons yet.
You install it the same way you would install a regular mouse. Which in my case just meant that I plugged in the attached USB port to my computer. In the end it only took me a day to get used to this new way of working and by the end of the week I stopped to reach for the spot where my regular mouse used to be. I love the copy and paste feature when I am working with Excel and I also noticed that I work a little bit faster than I used to. I started to miss the rollermouse whenever I was working from home because I still use my crappy touch pad on my laptop when I am there.

The Best Part

The absolute best part has to be that my constant neck pain has magically disappeared. I used to get horrible headaches once a week at least and my neck always felt so tight and the pain would also travel to my shoulders. Sitting more upright and not leaning and reaching the whole day really made a huge difference. A research study conducted at Harvard University determined that compared to a traditional mouse, the RollerMouse reduces muscle effort in the forearm by 20%. If you combine this with the additional features, I think the RollerMouse is the way to go.

Have you ever tried some sort of RollerMouse? You can test the RollerMouse Red for 14 days for free if you are interested!