As in sports and athletic events, your mental or psychological state of mind can have a big impact on the way you perform at your computer. Your state of mind can affect your performance in many ways. For example, under stress, you may press down on the keyboard harder, take fewer breaks, or type faster. Also, as described in the works of John Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, you may develop pain in your back, neck, or any other part of your body as the physical manifestation of emotional stress. In addition to pain, your body’s natural responses to stress can cause the production of extra hormones such as cortisol that in the short term help you focus and work more efficiently but can cause your body harm in the long term, even leading in some cases to heart attacks or strokes. Consequently, a computer athlete takes steps to minimize the impact of stress so that he can be a healthy, happy computer user.

Under stress, many people change their work habits to become more efficient but cause themselves physical harm in the process. For example, when programmers are in the last throes of a project, they are sometimes said to be on a “death march,” also known as “crunch time” in other industries. During that time, employees tend to work longer hours under high amounts of stress. In some cases,  companies have even prolonged crunch time in order to squeeze more out of their current employees. Whether or not such practices are fair, under demanding work conditions, you still have personal choices to make. You can become a computer athlete and avoid debilitating injury, or you can change companies. From my personal experience at a startup company, I know that stock options (aka “the golden handcuffs”) can keep you tied to your work in hopes of a big future payoff. In my case, I decided to focus on attaining pain-free computing.

Stress affects the way you work at your computer and impacts your body’s systems.

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