Task Group on RSI recommended that people spend no longer than six hours per day working at a computer, particularly if that work involves steady typing. The guidelines also recommended taking five-minute breaks every 40 minutes or so. While a six-hour max may seem unrealistic given students' regular work habits, it does provide a realistic goal and a good benchmark beyond which people should be especially mindful of the risk of RSI, Diamond said. Changing work habits is not easy, especially when people are under deadline pressure, Diamond said. But it can be crucial.
Some people really have that mentality.
People really need to not feel guilty for taking time off from typing if their wrists are tired. Or telling a professor that they really have a problem, they need to protect their wrists, and have another day on an assignment. But people are afraid to do that. Grabowski recommends against taking two programming courses at once so as to reduce exposure to stress from the strenuous coding and debugging those courses often demand. While prevention is the best way to avoid RSI, early attention to symptoms makes for an able second line of defense.