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Slacker or Sick
dancpsu writes "Researchers at Temple University's College of Health Professions found that early nerve damage caused by repetitive strain injuries can trigger "sick worker" syndrome -- often mistaken for poor performance. They discovered that nerve injuries caused by low-force, highly repetitive work can be blamed on an onslaught of cytokines -- proteins that help start inflammation. Unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the cytokines affected the rats' psychosocial responses. At three weeks, even before the rats experienced pain from their wrist injuries, they began to self-regulate their work behavior. By five weeks to eight weeks, when cytokine production reached "peak" levels, some rats curled up in a ball and slept in between tasks."
"Early nerve damage caused by repetitive strain injuries can trigger "sick worker" syndrome -- characterized by malaise, fatigue and depression"
If this doesn't prompt you to get up from your computer and go to bed a bit earlier tonight, there's no hope for you, in other words. You'll be involluntarily curled up like a rat ball, if you don't take charge of your wrist health.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Personally, I'm a slaker. But I come by that naturally. My father, and his father, and his father, were all slakers. It is the way of our people.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Damn, do those Rats go to University too?
Repetitive strain injury is one thing, but if you combine that with ultra-stress, depression, insane workloads, and extremely difficult work... THEN you're fucked. The common term for this phenomenon is "University".
Your hand is so sore you can barely write with it; your fingers seem permanently dented where your pencil resides.. in fact, every muscle in your body aches. Theyve been aching for so long you cant remember.. painkillers do nothing now. Youve had 8 strong coffees, your mind is numb and throbbs... Your neck is so stiff and sore... not a wink of sleep in days, yet you just couldnt fully fall asleep if you tried. Social interaction is futile - you can barely manage to utter coherent language, and most of such encounters are awkward and embarassing. All you can do is calculation, logic - the world around you seems etherally mechanical, filled with logical/mathematical portent. Youve been sitting on your bed for 12 hours straight, listening to the same song over and over, its 4AM, and nothing makes any sense anymore. Possible failure looms, watches you like a hawk - it forces you onward, mercilissly. Theres over 20 hours more material to study. The exam starts in 4 hours.
Sure... the rats "self regulate" their activity because of the possibilty of damage. Please... somebody...show me the same behavior in ever crack and war crack players (I'm guilty of both). If the tendency did exist to self regulate potenatially repetive stress related injuries I'd say that their logs would confirm as much. We've got tons of human related data.. why aren't we using it instead of rats?
okay, I'm going to bed now. I can't even type a correct critique of my retardness.
+1 bedtime
I've actually read this, it's a not-so-subtle peice of corporate propaganda. It causes the reader self doubt; and sometimes convinces the reader that THEY should change for the better of the corporation. If this peice of shit were given to me by my boss I would quit in no quiet, or kind way.
Damn, someone took the domain already.
In the case of most people here?
Try to make your workspace more ergodynamic with an ergo keyboard, gel wrist pads, proper chair height, etc.
In addition, get a set of chinese exercise balls (the solid kind, not the hollow kind. I have several sets made of marble that I give as gifts to fellow geeks) and use them every day. After a while, you will notice a positive change in the way that your wrists feel.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Check out this thread on the supposedly serious topic of planetary exploration.
What else do you come here for? Elightenment?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
What's interesting though, is that managers have a static view of people, as if they were components. Actually, they are systems with self-regulating behavior. Naturally, one of the things the system regulates is physical well being. But it would be interesting to try to quantify the effect of work on psychological well being.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I had to stop reading it about halfway through because I couldn't stand the patronizing tone. I kept thinking, "Okay, I get it. I have to look for opportunities, and I shouldn't let myself get too comfortable, and I should be ready for a sudden upheaval. What's your next point?" But there never was another point - it just kept bashing those into the readers' heads. I felt like ripping the book in half.
And I had a similar (but not as pronounced) reaction: I remembered that I work to live, not live to work.
When you click something, it is activated NOW. When you move your mouse over something there is a delay before it is activated.
When I want to get something done, I want to get it done NOW. I can't stand the delay.
Furthermore making actions time-based means that it is impossible for you to stop in the middle of something, since the mouse would continue to select various things if it gets bumped around while you are doing something else.
The balls the parent above you refers to do not have any sort of chain or silk connecting them per your wikipedia article. They are a pair of loose balls.