Stop whatever you're doing and freeze. Now, evaluate your body. Does anything -- your neck, perhaps -- feel achy? And your wrists and fingers -- are they okay after all that typing and texting?While working long hours at the computer, you've complained about (and subsequently ignored) the toll desk work takes on your body. But it's easy to brush off the daily aches and pains when the solution is so unclear.If you're lucky, your company might offer its employees ergonomic consultations. But, if you're among the majority without such luxuries, it's time to take matters into your own hands.Obviously, talk to a doctor or ergonomic specialist before making any changes, but we talked to a couple of ergo experts, and this is what they recommended. Scoot your chair away from your desk and sit down comfortably. For many people, it would look a lot like sitting in a car. Your feet are on the floor in front of you; your hands are in your lap; and your shoulders relax as you lean back just a bit. Your behind...is behind you.
This is called your "natural posture." In it, your vertebrae are stacked, your entire back moves as you breathe, and your pelvis is positioned so that your spine is stacked properly.Memorize this natural posture. Since we've been taught to "sit up straight" and "tuck in" the tailbone, it won't be an easy change. If it helps, take Esther Gokhale's advice and pretend you have a tail.With this in mind, you can start building an ergonomic workstation that supports this posture.Building around the natural posture, the keyboard and mouse should be positioned in a way that keeps your elbows to your sides, and your arms at or below a 90-degree angle. This way, the muscle load is reduced and you're not straining.Position your keyboard 1 to 2 inches above your thighs. For most people, that probably means employing a pull-out keyboard tray. Alternatively, you can lower your desk, but the keyboard tray is a preferred method. The keyboard should ideally be positioned with a negative tilt -- down and away from you, so that your arms and hand follow the downward slope of your thighs.
That being said, never use the kickstands provided underneath most keyboards.Ideally, your keyboard and mouse should be shoulder-distance apart and as level as possible. A couple of things will help you achieve this.First, consider purchasing a keyboard without a number pad, as the number pad puts the letter keys -- your primary input tools -- off-center. As for keeping the mouse and keyboard level, you might want to raise your keyboard with some DIYing, or get a flatter mouse.Setting up your screen, or screens, doesn't have to be complicated. Arrange them in this order, and you'll be set.If your screen is too far away, you'll start doing something ergonomics experts like to call "turtling," or craning your neck. Place the monitor too far away, and you'll find yourself extending to reach it. To find the sweet spot, sit back and extend your arm. The tips of your middle finger should land on your screen. If you have two monitors, set them up side by side (no gap), and place the secondary monitor off-center.
Those who use both monitors equally should center them both. Now, sit back and extend your arm and pan in an arch. As you pan your arm, your finger tip should almost always touch the monitors. Use the same logic when placing other items, like a document holder or a phone.To adjust the height, try this ergo trick: close your eyes. When you open them, your eyes should land on the address bar. If not, lower or raise the monitors using the built-in option, with risers, or with a book. You can also check out this guide for more on height adjustment.Finally, tilt the monitors down just a smidge to avoid reflections.Your chair is your best ergonomic friend. It supports your back, your bottom, and your posture. There are many chairs to choose from, but only a few important things to look out for.Think back to your natural posture. With your tailbone sticking out just a bit, and your vertebrae in their slight curve, the lumbar portion of your spine points in toward your belly. To help you sustain this posture, find a chair that offers good lumbar support.
When you sit down, there should be a little space between the edge of the chair and the back of your knees, about the size of your fist. Depending on the chair, you might be able to adjust the seat depth accordingly.When you sit, your feet should be on the floor (not dangling) in front of you, and your thighs should be slightly below your hips. Shorter folks might need to use a footrest, while extra-tall types might need to adjust the height of the desk.If you ever find yourself tucking your feet behind you, sitting on one leg, or in another funky position, you chair needs to be adjusted.After all is said and done, there's one final piece that you can't simply set-and-forget: physical activity. Take a break at least once an hour to walk around the office or stretch. If it helps, set an hourly alarm as a reminder.No matter how ergonomic your workstation is, stretching your body is the only thing that can combat the health issues that arise from prolonged sitting. To guide this article, we turned to Alan Hedge, a professor at Cornell University who has been teaching, researching, and consulting on ergonomics for over 30 years.
This site, one of the first ergonomics sites on the Internet, offers a wealth of information on ergonomics.Prafulla Mukhi Prabhu Venkatesh, an ergonomics consultant and physiotherapist who has been practicing since 1992, also guided this piece.Five or more hours of sedentary sitting, according to Dr. David Agus, is the health equivalent of smoking a pack and a quarter of cigarettes. Yet, sitting around is something we get plenty of practice at. Reading and writing and creating on a computer makes for big chunks of sedentary time. If you’re reading this post right now, are you sitting down? How long have you been sitting? It’s a topic that I think of often. We’ve all kind of taken a shining to it on the Buffer team, being more aware of the time we spend in front of the computer, how we take breaks, how we focus on exercise and movement. And we’re not alone. There is tons of interest out there about the healthiest way to survive a sedentary job—from the health recommendations to the tools to the activities.
So what is indeed the healthiest way? And what can you change about your style today to get the biggest benefit? Stand up every 20 minutes. Studies have shown that our bodies can benefit from simply standing up, contracting muscles, and moving. Think of standing as pushing a reset button on your body. If you press the reset button before the timer hits 20 minutes, you’ll avoid any of the negative side effects of a sedentary job. Gretchen Reynolds, a reporter on exercise research for The New York Times, wrote a book condensing health studies down to their most essential parts. One of the key takeaways from her research was this emphasis on standing up and the golden 20-minute mark. New science shows very persuasively that standing up about every 20 minutes, even for only a minute or two, reduces your risks of developing diabetes and heart disease. By standing up, you cause the big muscles in your legs and back to contract, which leads to an increase in certain enzymes that break up fat in the blood stream.
You don’t have to jog in place or do jumping jacks. A very pleasant additional benefit is that standing up every 20 to 30 minutes also seems to prompt the body to burn calories, so you don’t gain as much weight from sitting at the office most of the day. If you can stand up every 20 minutes — even if you do nothing else — you change how your body responds physiologically. Other studies confirm the benefit of this simple act of standing. For instance, a study of employees at New Balance shoe headquarters showed that performing an activity every 30 minutes—standing, walking, stretching—improved not only health but also engagement and concentration. So now the question becomes: How do you stand up every 20 minutes? At Buffer, each person on the team is equipped with a Jawbone UP to track our movement, activity levels, and sleep. At the end of every day, we can see how we moved (or didn’t move). For instance, here’s my Thursday. Those big, flat valleys are exactly the types of inactive stretches it’s best to avoid.
Solution: The UP band lets you set a move reminder that causes your wristband to buzz after a certain amount of inactivity. Set it to 20 minutes, and stand up when it buzzes. Other fitness bands offer similar functionality, too. And if you’d prefer to keep things super straightforward, you can go with a trusty phone or kitchen timer to set a manual notification for yourself. One of our favorite work hacks on the Buffer team is workstation popcorn. You start your day with a to-do list, then plan your list around different cafes, coffee shops, and workstations, popping from one to the next once you’ve completed a set of tasks. For instance, you might start the day at the office, spend the late morning at a coffee shop, hit a co-working space in the afternoon, and return to the office conference room to wrap up your day. Walking in between each work place injects multiple opportunities for movement into your day. Though you won’t be popping from station to station every 20 minutes, you can supplement the 20-minute rule with these popcorn intervals, helping you achieve more consistent movement throughout the day.
One variation on the standing theme is that it’s not necessarily about standing up. The Cornell Ergonomics lab has the following advice: Every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes. Movement is important to get blood circulation through the muscles. And movement is FREE! Research shows that you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping jacks) to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient. So build in a pattern of creating greater movement variety in the workplace In theory, moving can happen whether you’re standing or not. There are several chair options (see below) that allow for more movement than the traditional office chair. You can rock back and forth and lean side to side, and you’d be getting the muscle exercise you need via these simple movements. The same goes for those who stand while working. Standing still for long stretches will eventually lead to its own set of health problems (undue pressure on joints, for instance), so you’re better off swaying, rocking, and stretching while you stand.
Perhaps the most obvious (and increasingly popular) idea of how to stand and move more at work is to convert your workstation with a standing desk. If you’re curious to try this for yourself, all the best advice is to start small and cheap. And take things slow. Small and cheap is the best way to start because you don’t want to pay big bucks for something you don’t like and therefore might not enjoy using. High-end standing desks can cost over $1,000. Therefore, it’s best to give a standing workstation a trial before you commit to a steep price tag. First things first, posture is essential no matter what desk you use. Here’s a helpful graphic from Wired about the appropriate height, distances, and angles for a standing desk. You’ll notice that this type of setup gets a little difficult with a laptop because the keyboard and screen would be on the same level. If you plan on a standing desk for your laptop, it might be best to invest in a standalone keyboard and mouse so that you can adjust your screen and peripherals to the ideal height.
As for the desk itself … In the spirit of starting small, the fixed-height standing desk should come first. This can be as simple as spending a few days working from a kitchen counter or a coffee bar. Other folks have found creative ways of building a simple setup to try out. Programmer Marco Arment built a Coke can stand for his monitor and keyboard. The $22 IKEA desk hack is the brainchild of Colin Nederkoom, CEO of Customer.io. With side tables, shelves, and brackets purchased at IKEA, Nederkoom put together a custom desk for his monitor and keyboard/mouse. Products like the Varidesk and Kangaroo Pro help convert a standard desk into a standing desk, and they have the adjustable power to set the screen and keyboard at the ideal height. The advantages of an adjustable desk are likely to be noticed immediately: you can vary the height at which you work when sitting, standing, or moving in between. The hybrid options like the Varidesk and Kangaroo Pro help bridge the gap between non-adjustable desks and the full-on, standalone adjustable desks.
For the best standalone adjustable desks, I’ll cede the floor to the Wirecutter, which tested a number of desk options and found that the NextDesk Terra was the best standing desk on the market. Starting at more than $1,000, investments into these upper-end desks is not cheap. If you’d like a cheaper option, you might consider something more like Safco’s Muv Stand-up, which starts at $274. Along with a standing desk, a supplement to moving more while you work is to find an active desk chair that supports constant movement and good posture. Even those who opt for standing at work find that it’s best not to stand all day; a 70:30 split of standing to sitting is often best. The following chairs can help. These adjustable stools and seats can fit either workstyle—standing or sitting—and they support constant movement throughout the day by being just unstable enough to keep your muscles in motion. In a study of marathoners, researchers found that participants trained an average of 40 miles per week, which is enough exercise to place them among the most active adults.