A comfortable, productive workspace is all about making the right adjustments to your working environment. Ideally you want ergonomic equipment that is highly adjustable but to create a fully ergonomic set up office might not be an option if you have just made the decision to ergonomically set up your space. You can try these simple yet effective tweaks to make a real difference:
The key objective is about making clever adjustments to position your working environment and equipment for your body; that’s your desk, keyboard, screen, mouse, etc. Having your “equipment” in the right position will make working in a good posture feel natural and normal.
A great example I recently saw was from an image shared by one of our customers where he adjusted his screen height by using a stack of books. Screen height has a big impact on head position and neck posture. We all automatically adjust our head/neck position to adapt to the position of the screen, we do this without thinking and only once we feel the discomfort of a stiff neck do we realise what we been doing. Sadly, we then complain but often do nothing about the cause of the discomfort. A simple adjustment to your screen height will dramatically improve your posture, a simple stack of books at the right height will bring correctly position your screen, helping to reduce neck strain and improve you overall posture. The stack of books is obviously not ideal as it doesn’t have all the adjustments of a monitor arm which will allow you to move your screen forwards or backwards as you change your body position in your chair or tilt the screen to accommodate for lighting or move around completely to share a visual with a colleague.
Perfect is the enemy of good enough so although the stack of books isn’t a long term solution it’s a great start as having your screen at the right height will make a massive difference to your comfort and productivity (with long term health benefits too.)
So go ahead, make small, cost effective, easy to implement, intentional changes like this to make a significant impact on your comfort and productivity when working at your desk.
Ergonomics is about working smarter, not harder!
