Speed Up Your Mouse
June 3rd, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
Email this article to a friend
Here’s a very simple productivity tip that you might find helpful: crank up the speed of your mouse cursor. On Windows you can do this by clicking Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse and adjusting the speed as you see fit.
Everyone has their own preferences of course, but I think the default mouse cursor speed is way too slow for most experienced computer users. The advantage of higher cursor speeds is that you don’t need to physically move the mouse as much to get the cursor to go the same distance on the screen.
On my PC’s slowest mouse speed setting, I have to move the mouse about 28 cm to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other (acceleration is turned off). I have no idea who’d want to use such a slow setting. But at the fastest speed setting, I only need to move the mouse about 3 cm to accomplish that same cursor movement. The default setting is somewhere in the middle. This is a wide range, meaning that at the lowest speed, I have to move my hand nearly 10 times as far to get the same cursor movement as the highest speed. That’s a lot more potential wrist strain.
You can also fiddle with the acceleration setting. Higher acceleration with lower speeds allows you to move the mouse across large areas quickly while gaining finer control for slow movements. Even the slowest mouse speed with some decent acceleration can be workable.
Currently I use the fastest mouse speed setting with low acceleration, and I think I could handle even faster settings if the driver would allow it. I gradually ramped up my speed from the default setting by two notches at a time (there are 10 notches total). At first my accuracy plummeted with each speed increase, but I got used to the faster speed and finer motor control movements after a couple days, and my accuracy improved.
Aside from reducing wrist strain, I found the faster speeds to be more efficient once I got used to them. It takes a lot less wrist movement to zoom the cursor from one corner of the screen to another.
I can’t handle max speed on my laptop’s touchpad though because it’s too inaccurate, but I’m fine at max speed if I plug in an external mouse.
Faster speeds are easier if you have a good quality mouse. Mine is a Logitech cordless optical mouse. It eats batteries for breakfast, but I can never go back to using a corded rollerball mouse — the cord and the grimy ball reduce accuracy too much and force me to slow down.
This isn’t likely to be deemed the productivity breakthrough of the decade, but given how much you use your mouse each day, might it be worthwhile to push yourself to go faster? Isn’t it time you stopped jerking your wrist around so much? 
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:02 am
The only real benefit I can see in having the slower speeds available is for users who are suffering arthritis or other ailments that cause shakiness. Using a high speed on a mouse with shaky hands increases the chances of inaccurate clicking. For the elderly, the slower mouse speed would be perfect for them to navigate some websites where the icon to click is much too small to hover over it accurately.
However, I agree with the notion of increasing the speed gradually. I have one optical mouse at home that runs at top speed on the login screen for Windows XP. However, once the password is entered, it slows down to the speed I prefer. Really frustrating in that it is quite difficult to handle it with enough finesse to just click on the icon that would allow me to type in my password.
So, obviously, the mouse settings can vary across manufacturers. Top speed on one mouse may be beyond human ability to control it sufficiently while on another, it is far from enough.
June 3rd, 2005 at 10:56 am
Yike, that final sentence/question almost sounded like it had a meaning you didn’t intend? Or did you?
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:01 pm
I upped my mouse speed a while back and reaped the rewards, thanks for the reminder of its benefits, I’ve just cranked it up some more.
June 4th, 2005 at 10:34 am
Another tip for the use of the mouse, not related to speed, but something that might help if you have wrist inflammation or elbow strain when using the mouse:
Put the mouse in front of you, between you and the computer keyboard. This may mean you have to push the keyboard a fit farther away so you have room between the edge of your desk and the keyboard.
The benefit is that your arm is in a more natural and supported (by your desk) position, with the hand in front of you near your center, instead of out to the side where the position also tends to put a twist on your elbow and shoulder.
The usual position of the mouse to the side of the keyboard also puts your hand holding the mouse in such a way that the outside (pinky) tendon at the wrist is in a kink, putting it at risk of inflammation and tendintis. The mouse-in-front-of-you position has the hand position where the outside tendon tends to be in a straight(er)-line position, thus less risk for inflammation.
June 4th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
The best thing I have found is to get an optical, USB mouse. I set the speed as high as I can comfortably work with. The size and resolution of the monitor may be a factor here. I definitely like it faster on a large monitor. When working with Photoshop and other graphics programs though… slower is better.
BTW… There is nothing worse than a rubberball mouse that skips.
June 4th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Steve, I’m curious: have you experimented to find out which type of mouse-pointing hardware is most productive for you?
I’m a fan of the IBM Trackpoint; others I know swear by a touchpad; while still others like a non-keyboard-based mouse.
What works best for you?
Eric
June 4th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
I’ve experimented with trackballs and touchpads over the years. I still do best with an optical cordless mouse. I just don’t find the touchpad precise enough with fine movements, so I wouldn’t touch it for art editing in Photoshop.
I’m left-handed, so I have the mouse buttons reversed and use the mouse with my left hand. I feel there’s some advantage to this because the way keyboards are designed, it’s less of a reach to move my left hand to the mouse on the left of the keyboard than it would be for a right handed person to grab the mouse on the right. With a mouse on the left, you only need to move your hand about 1/3 of the distance vs. if the mouse is on the right.
June 4th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Thanks, Steve. Makes sense to me. I enjoy your blog and your focus. Keep up the good work!
Eric
June 5th, 2005 at 5:27 am
I would like a two-speed mouse. High speed for most work, but by pressing a Shift or other key, the speed would drop to one half for finer detail work when editing photographs.
June 6th, 2005 at 3:00 am
Don’t forget to increase the mouse sample rate resolution, by changing the sample rate at:
Control Panel/Mouse/Hardware/Properties/Advanced Settings/Sample Rate
Change it to 200 samples a second, it is by default only 80.
I can see the difference in better controllability, and moving is smoother.
This is essentially important for high speeds.
June 7th, 2005 at 9:23 pm
i actually like it now that its fast!…i thought it would be more “worst” but seems to be bearable..this is good
just joined the email list after comming across the site from a link posted on incomexchange.com
hoping to print off some of the articles and read it in my spare time..
cheers~!
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:42 am
There is a reason why somebody might want to use a slow mouse speed. When you are doing a lot of very delicate, pixel-precise, work with a mouse it definitely helps to gain a finer control over the mouse movements when you set your mouse to a lower speed.
Also, greater distances you need to travel with your mouse are performed by other groups of muscles then the more finer movements. Doing this releases the small muscles in your hand of some very hard work, avoiding or lower the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome. Especially very small and precise movements are accomplished by your body by tensioning the muscles to a higher degree, thereby putting extra stress on those muscles. To see this for yourself, write something in your normal handwriting, now write something as small as possible and observe your fingers.
July 9th, 2005 at 9:13 am
My old mouse was faulty, so I change it for a Microsoft Track-Ball. At the beginning, it took time to use it, and now I have difficult using the old mouse on the other PC. My wrist would play-up if I use the old mouse.
Unfortunity, I can’t change the other as it’s the family PC. My point is I was able to increase the speed of the Track-Ball, and able to use it at once.