Introduction
Hi, I’m Ammar (or AA0000). I’m from Syria, and I’m 21. Back in 2017, I used to have way too much free time on my hands. I spent a lot of that time playing Minecraft, managing servers and creating plugins for them, texting with friends, playing Piano Tiles 2 and Dancing Line, learning HTML and CSS, and helping others with their servers on Discord, Slack, HelpDesk, and a forum, 11–13h a day, every day, all on my phone, Sony M2, for about two years.
I also used to play a game called Fast Type. It’s a typing test thing but for mobile, and I used to type relatively fast with just two fingers. The average typing speed on a PC with 10 fingers is about 40 words per minute (WPM). I used to type 78 WPM with just my thumbs, on mobile, and the world record for that was 93 WPM, I wanted to beat that record.
All of this was just too much for just two fingers. Especially when you don’t rest, in addition to me being quite underweight back then, I started to develop Tendonitis.
What Happened
It started with my thumbs stiffening after typing and making a loud noise when I tried to move them afterward, then it developed into pain. With time the pain started becoming more severe relentlessly and it started to last a lot longer, even after not using my thumbs. I went to a pharmacy and they told me that I just needed to rest. After seeing 5 different doctors over 4 years, while the pain only got worse, I have only been prescribed pain killers. Not knowing that it was only painkillers, I continued using my hands. I started doing freelance translating, which only made things worse. I had to start monitoring my hands’ usage to reduce it.
Start Monitoring
When looking for programs that could give me the right data, I came across WhatPulse around 2020. Ever since, I used to look at my PC usage every single day to see how much I used the keyboard and mouse, which programs I used the most, and then try to reduce my usage and time on those programs.
To make things easier, I started inputting the total keys into a sheet every day to compare my usage over time. But that was a lot of work, and I wanted an easier method. That’s where WhatPulse’s export wizard helped me out. It can export the usage grouped by different periods and can go as granular as per hour:
Export Wizard
It is a Premium feature, and due to super low salary rates in Syria (around $36 a month), I couldn’t afford it, so I made a deal with the developer to translate WhatPulse to Arabic in exchange for the membership. After debating at what granularity I wanted to monitor my usage, I decided on daily and then I made a Google Sheet containing all of the exported stats and created this chart off that data:
Note that I wanted to list all of my data history, and the WhatPulse dashboards don’t go back that far yet. If you want to try this yourself, you can find the Google Sheet here.
In Nov 2021, right after that giant blue spike, the pain started to get severely out of hand, and I saw a very expensive specialist. They told me I could be suffering from Myopathy and they gave me vitamins and supplements, not just pain killers. After starting these medications, I wanted to compare my usage over time to see if they helped me more than the painkillers.
And indeed they did; you can see my usage progressively spiking in the end! Of course, while keeping the pain under control.
Nowadays, I’m at 130 words per minute on PC using Dvorak, and I’m trying to reach a healthy weight and overcome myopathy. I’m also planning on buying an ergonomic keyboard in the future, like the ZSA Moonlander or Kinesis 360, and see if I can improve my productivity even further.
Regards, Ammar.
Conclusion
Ammar’s story is one of the reasons WhatPulse exists; to monitor your productivity in different scenarios. I hope you found his story inspirational just like I did.
Do you have a similar story? I’d love to share it. Contact me at martijn@whatpulse.org.