Reasons You Should Put the Mouse on the Left If You’re Right-Handed

https://medium.com/@hb20007/10-reasons-you-should-put-the-mouse-on-the-left-if-youre-right-handed-20510d5e211d

by hb20007 • 8 years ago

54 60 8 years ago

izzydata• 8 years ago

A lot of these don't make a lot of sense to me. How is freeing up my right hand to use the keyboard a reason to use my left hand? If I use my right hand then it frees up my left hand to use the keyboard instead.

anonu• 8 years ago

I suppose the idea is you'll suck at left handed mouse handling so you need to compensate by using the keyboard more.

Totally agree with your view though. No real compelling reason to switch sides

hb20007• 8 years ago

It frees your right hand to use keyboard buttons intended for the right hand such as backspace, delete and numpad.

mitchty• 8 years ago

Yep, also you don't have to move your arm as far to reach the mouse then by not moving over numeric keys.

Seems small, but as a righty i've been doing the left hand mouse/trackpad for a while now and it definitely helps on the rsi.

guiambros• 8 years ago

...frees your right hand to use keyboard buttons intended for the right hand...

On the other hand (ha!) you lose access to navigational keys that are typically used when you're "mousing", changing between apps/tabs and screens - e.g. alt-tab, ESC, alt-w, alt-q, alt-F4, meta-shortcuts, etc.

I noticed that I use the right keys - enter, backspace, delete, etc - mostly when I'm typing, so I want my two hands in the keyboard anyway.

For me the mouse on the right side is the best combination.

jjuel• 8 years ago

As was stated in the article. Buttons like delete and backspace are on the right so you can mouse select and delete without significantly changing your hands position on the keyboard. But yes that is a little bit of a weak argument.

Jian-Yang• 8 years ago

I agree. Copy and paste is on the left hand for QWERTY. That gets a lot more use compared to select-delete. Besides, select and delete with the mouse is seldom the most optimal (and you could just cut the text with ctrl-x)

cup-of-tea• 8 years ago

The idea is you select with the keyboard, not the mouse.

chapium• 8 years ago

Do most people not alt tab much? This advice would adversely affect my alt tabbing habit.

gremlinsinc2• 8 years ago

I don't even have alt tab... lol so no. Don't do that at all. I just use windows/mod + left/right to go to the next tab over in whatever window is focused (i3wm).

Or mod+workspace# gets me to the window the screen I want is in, then mod+right tabs over to the application I need.

GoToRO• 8 years ago

What's the difference between a start-up and a corporation? In a corporation the mouse is symmetric. (so you can move it on the left)

kennu• 8 years ago

I tend to keep a trackpad or mouse on both sides, so that no matter what position I happen to be sitting in, it's always easy to reach it.

justacat• 8 years ago

Yea, I keep a mouse on the right and a trackpad on the left. It is a good combination.

mchahn2• 8 years ago

I live with a 3D joystick in my left hand and trackball in my right hand. Obviously I do this for 3D cad work. My arms barely move. I go out of my way to avoid the keyboard, even to the point of using the "mouse" for cutting and pasting.

thecatspaw• 8 years ago

we all know what the true reason is for putting the mouse on the left if you're right handed

jugg1es• 8 years ago

A broken right arm in my adolescent years forced me to perform the action you allude to here with great precision using my left hand.

gremlinsinc2• 8 years ago

Hmm... some people I know, are right handed but use the left for that because of right mouse positioning... lol

jasonmaydie• 8 years ago

Sounds like it would increase the risk of RSI instead of decreasing it

davidjgraph• 8 years ago

I'm left handed and always naturally used the mouse on the right-hand side. The handy side-effect of this is when I developed RSI in my right wrist, using a touchpad on the left was really easy...

JamesBaxter• 8 years ago

I move my mouse to either side so I don’t have issues with the general concept but this is nonsense and is just to pad the number to an even 10.

“It makes you a more interesting person”

hypfer• 8 years ago

Why is this in my rss feed.

abdulhaq• 8 years ago

We give up, why is it in your RSS feed?

zero_intp• 8 years ago

Wow, I did this for all of the listed reasons here. I work with the left hand, game with the right.

tom_• 8 years ago

I switched to mousing left-handed about ten years ago, and actually use the mouse more, not less, because it's now so close. I still use the keyboard for invoking commands, but use the mouse a lot more now for moving the cursor, even for quite short distances.

de_watcher• 8 years ago

Well, when we got mice, they felt kinda optional. So organically we used the left hand for them.

I keep it like that now. There are way more buttons on the keyboard - more work for the right hand.

Default WASD gaming is also more solid: place the thumb of your right hand on the left Ctrl - you can do a healthy rotation around this point while all other fingers are always above some relevant keys.

Mouse on the left is useful if someone is sitting alongside you (on your left) and wants to point something on the screen with your mouse.

potlee2• 8 years ago

This is very cool and I am going to try this!

There are also studies that show there are benefits to your brain when you learn new neuro-muscular skills, like brushing with your left hand.

dingaling• 8 years ago

I have become generally more adept with my left hand after moving my trackball to the left about 15 years ago.

Sometimes i find myself using a screwdriver or knife in the left.

potlee2• 8 years ago

I learned to use my thumb on the trackpad when I am using my laptop. I feel so much more productive, my fingers can stay very close to their home position while my thumb handles minor mouse tasks. I do switch to using my finger for when I need more fine grained pointer control.

saltcured• 8 years ago

This is why some of us are Thinkpad devotees... We use the pointy-stick between the G, H, and B keys to shove the cursor around during keyboard-heavy interaction. I use the thumb to click three button zones on the top of the trackpad. To drag, you hold down the thumb and keep steering the stick with your index finger.

I also change the settings to use the edges of the trackpad for scrolling rather than requiring a multi-finger gesture. This allows me to do brief bouts of scrolling with much less relocation of the hands. I would even turn off the trackpad mouse behavior if I could do so without also losing the scroll function. It's only ever a mistake when I brush the across it and move the mouse.

kqr• 8 years ago

Random story time: I have vivid memories of my (left-handed) dad insisting on having the mouse on the left of the keyboard. I remember it being annoying to move it back to the right side after he had used the computer. But when asked today, my dad – with apparent full sincerity – says it's preposterous and he has no memory of that. Given that he's worked with computers pretty much since I was born, he must remember if that was the case, right?

I guess it may have to remain a mystery.

I sometimes feel like half of what my dad did when I was very young must have been planting these weird memories as an experiment in order to see how I react to it when I get older. (I also remember him deliberately picking out the bottommost package of diapers in the pile at the dollar store, causing the entire pile to fall and cascade over the floor. Cannot get him to admit it to this day. I did very recently manage to drag out of him an admission of the sleight of hand where he ceased his heartbeat in the wrist, something else he's denied for a long time.)

justinclift• 8 years ago

As a data point, both of my parents are like that.

Stuff I clearly remember from years ago they don't recall at all. It's probably not unusual.

kmano8• 8 years ago

This comment reminded my of an episode of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast on memory -- with Brian Williams' story around an experience he had in Iraq 15 years ago. If I remember correctly, the takeaway is that memory isn't infallible.. not a video recording of the past.

He also describes experiments done on flashbulb memories (e.g. what were you doing when you heard about 9/11).. and found that people who wrote down that week what they were doing, then returned to that notation years later, will swear they remember it differently.. admit it's their handwriting but express they must have been lying at the time. Pretty interesting stuff.

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/24-free-brian-william...

bitwize2• 8 years ago

When you're an adult, your dad will often "have no memory" of the shit he pulled as a dad when you were a kid.

This, I believe, has a couple of related reasons:

1) Plausible deniability. He still wants you to think of him as the greatest dad in the whole wide world, so will deny ever having the slightest fault in raising you.

2) When you're a kid, everything is so much more important, because the world is so new. So what may have been a mere trifle for him, was a disaster for you. And he might have honestly forgot something that you remember vividly for being so devastating.

Source: Cannot get my dad to own up to much of the BS I remember.

SurrealSoul• 8 years ago

I am a left handed person and use a left handed mouse at work (OSX) and a right handed mouse at home (Windows). It helps with dissociating the macros for each system and gives me a subtile work vs play mindset. I would recommend giving it a shot for a day or two if you have the desk space

lb1lf• 8 years ago

I'm a leftie and keep my mouse (or, if I've got any influence over the choice of pointing device, a trackball) on the right.

The biggie is that it frees up my dominant hand for writing - additionally, I've noted that my fine-motorical skills using my right hand has improved drastically over the years, to the extent that I am now almost ambidextrous.

(My handwriting is definitely readable when written with my right hand, but I find it more of a mental effort for less gain than simply just writing with my left hand...)

Think of moving the mouse over to the 'wrong' side as an exercise in building redundancy. :)

SketchySeaBeast• 8 years ago

I've experienced the opposite - I'm a lefty with the mouse on the right, but with the exception of mouse use my hand has gotten no more dexterous - I still write like a toddler.

gaius• 8 years ago

Mouse on the right, Surface Dial on the left

nickthegreek• 8 years ago

Left hander who used to mouse with right, but now uses left due to RSI. The hardest thing for me is realizing how often I used the ESC key (which my left hand used to rest on).

sevensor• 8 years ago

I did this because I was experiencing intense pain in my right shoulder. Ten years on, the pain hasn't returned and the mouse stays on the left.

neolefty• 8 years ago

Same here! Except eventually I did switch back just from inertia (and having a right-handed mouse).

It's even where my HN username comes from. Mousing on the left felt like weightlifting for my corpus callosum or something.

https://neolefty.org/wordpress/about/

madeuptempacct• 8 years ago

"People who notice that I’m right-handed but keep my mouse on the left often ask me why. It never fails to arouse the curiosity of people who have never seen it before, and it has led to interesting conversations with individuals that I wouldn’t have spoken much with otherwise."

This kind of ruins the article. It's up there on cringe with "I keep a pack of gum on my desk and people know me as the 'gum guy'!"

Anyway, do you just use a standard mouse or re-map the buttons?

Slaul• 8 years ago

I have always used my mouse on the left side of the keyboard despite being right handed. I think it comes down to being a child learning to play PC games and not really having the dexterity in my left hand to control WASD and the various keybinds properly with my left hand. So I adjusted to mouse on the left and right hand on the keyboard.

It does make it annoying to type and play games at the same time though since I usually have to move the keyboard pretty far off center to get comfortable and if I want to type I have to move it back to center first.

iliaznk• 8 years ago

For what it's worth, I'd strongly recommend everyone try using a trackpad instead of a mouse with its advantage being less space it requires for operation. When using a mouse you constantly have to slide your arm around within an imaginary square on the desk surface and regularly lift the mouse to relocate your arm from the edge of the square back to its center. While with a trackpad you arm just rests and a single finger is all you need to do all the work. It's at least more quiet and you don't have to move you arm too far away from the keyboard when you need to use it.

sky_rw• 8 years ago

Problems also solved by increasing your mouse sensitivity.

lysp• 8 years ago

Yep this.

I use dual screen and I only need to move the mouse about an inch or slightly more to move completely over both screens.

toomanybeersies• 8 years ago

I've been using a trackpad as my main pointing device for probably 3 years now.

Macbook trackpads are so nice and large, and with gesture support they're so useful.

Upon saying that. If you have a good mouse with good DPI, you shouldn't be constantly relocating your mouse. When I used to use a nice mouse before it went walkabout I was able to move from one end of my screen to the other without ever lifting the mouse. That's how a mouse should be calibrated.

bitwize2• 8 years ago

I've found trackpads to be the worst thing ever. With today's buttonless trackpads, it's difficult to keep the pointer in position while clicking, or to do any kind of dragging.

Trackballs on the other hand... I still have my Logitech wired TrackMan with the ball under my thumb.

DamnInteresting• 8 years ago

I use a standard mouse on the right-hand side, but on the other hand, I have a trackpad on the left. The trackpad is great for quick macOS gestures and for occasionally standing in as a pointing device when my other hand is occupied (hush).

Only slightly related: I also have a "shuttle" on the left-hand side, it is wonderful for audio editing. I highly recommend such a tool for podcasters and other sound-making people. It's nice to pan and zoom effortlessly.

mchahn2• 8 years ago

When using a mouse you constantly have to slide your arm around within an imaginary square on the desk surface

I use a trackball, a highly underrated input device.

bwl• 8 years ago

I'm left handed and use mouse on the right side. Thanks for putting a positive spin on this. RSI in particular.

Unfortunately I miss out on the being an interesting person part!

wastedhours• 8 years ago

I did this when I was using Photoshop in college and started destroying my right shoulder. Now I have a wireless mouse I switch from hand-to-hand every so often to ensure I'm ruining both of my shoulders instead.

Using a mouse on the left side as a right handed person is amazingly fast to pick up. It's also really useful when showing people how to do things on a computer as you train yourself on the mouse, rather than just the muscle memory.

ectospheno• 8 years ago

Right hand use of the mouse for work never hurt my wrist. Minecraft and WoW did though. I kept the device on the right side but switched to a trackball and rebound any mouse button actions to the keyboard instead. Solved all my RSI issues.

GW150914• 8 years ago

I switched to a vertical mouse and my wrist pain went away. A good keyboard is also a must. I don’t think there is one “right” way though, it’s all very much a personal choice.

austinshea2• 8 years ago

The author isn't taking this article seriously, and I think it's pretty mundane in terms of it's humor.

What is it that people see in this?

qbrass• 8 years ago

It's harmless bikeshedding.

austinshea2• 8 years ago

Thanks. I was unaware of this term, but I agree 100%

foxyv• 8 years ago

Intriguing, but not likely to make me want to change. Everything about my current setup is designed around having the mouse on the right side. Also typing on the keyboard doesn't use the amount of fine movement that my mouse does. It's easy to hit a key with my left hand. Moving a mouse over a 4px border is a lot more difficult.

mnm1• 8 years ago

For RSI purposes, both sides suck horribly but it helps to alternate. The idea of having a mouse or trackball off center is often a huge reason for the RSI in the first place. And if one is concerned with RSI, simply using a mouse, even one of the more ergonomic ones is a bad idea due to the large amount of movement. Trackballs, trackpads, and other devices, especially if they can stay centered, IMO, are preferable. I really like the rollermouse, which despite its name, is not a mouse at all. If anything, switching hands constantly is the ideal and this allows that. The magic trackpad 2 from apple is not bad either, but takes a lot more work from the arms and fingers.

ajoy39• 8 years ago

I have a trackpad for gestures on my left and a mouse for point and click on my right. I am certifiably weird.

jackskell• 8 years ago

I like to use a keyboard with no number pad, as long as the work doesn't require one. This shortens the reach for the mouse appreciably.

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