More of us than ever are working from home because of COVID-19, and that means we need to make our home offices safe and healthy places to work. These tips can help you make inexpensive adjustments to your work space to stay productive and injury-free.
When you get into a car to drive it for the first time, what do you do? You adjust the seat so you can reach the pedals and see the road easily, as well as feel comfortable. You move the mirrors to make sure you have a clear line of sight behind you and to either side. Most cars let you change the headrest position and the seat belt height over your shoulder, too. These customizations make driving safer and more comfortable. When you work from home, it’s important to make similar adjustments.
If you’re new to working from home due to the novel coronavirus, you can set up your workspace to be safe and comfortable with a few ergonomic tips. Doing so reduces your chance of injury and increases your comfort, all of which helps you stay productive and focused.
You don’t need to spend a bundle on a special chair. The right office chair will help some, but you also need to think about how your feet hit the floor, whether your wrists bend when you type or mouse, and other factors. You can make many of these adjustments using items from around the house or with inexpensive purchases.
Whether the table is the right height is relative, of course. It depends on how tall you are. Hedge also had some tips for using inexpensive items, like a rolled-up towel for lumbar support and a laptop riser, to make any home office more ergonomically friendly.
There are four areas to focus your attention when setting up an ergonomic home office, according to Hedge, but before you get started, it’s just as important to consider what kind of work you do and what kind of equipment you need.
What equipment do you need to work? Do you have a desktop, laptop, tablet? How many monitors do you use? Do you look at books and physical paper often? Are there other peripherals you need, such as a microphone or stylus?
Additionally, what type of work do you do with that equipment? “The posture of the person sitting down really depends on what they’re doing with their hands,” Hedge said. So before you make any changes, consider how you spend the bulk of your work time. Do you type for hours at a time? Are you a graphic designer who relies heavily on a mouse or stylus? If there is a task that you do for extended periods of time, then customize your setup to be safe and comfortable for that task. For example, if you read physical paper, you might need to add a lamp to your desk.
Just as you make many adjustments in a car to fit your body, you should customize your home office to a similarly fine degree. In fact, good ergonomic posture for an office is not all that different from sitting in a car, with your feet flat but legs extended and your body not vertical but tilted slightly backward.
Your hands and wrists should be in a neutral posture, similar to your head. Extend your arm and hand forward to lay them flat on the table. The hand, wrist, and forearm are practically flush, which is what you want. What you don’t want is a hinge at the wrist.
Better: Find a posture that allows you to see the screen while sitting back in a way that provides lower back support. You might find it’s similar to sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, slightly leaning back.
If you don’t have a fancy office chair that rocks back, try putting a cushion, pillow, or towel behind your lower back. That will do some good. You can buy inexpensive chair cushions that are designed for lumbar support. Hedge also suggests looking into orthopedic seats (for an example, see BackJoy’s line of posture seats). These saddle-like products work with any chair, and they tilt your pelvis into a more ergonomic position. Shorter people might also find that having a footrest helps them achieve the right posture.
If you’re going to use a sit-stand desk, the optimal cycle is 20 minutes of seated work followed by 8 minutes of standing, followed by 2 minutes of moving around. Standing longer than about 8 minutes, said Hedge, leads people to start leaning. Additionally, every time you change the desk height, you must make sure you adjust all your other workstation components, like the keyboard and the monitor, to put your posture into a neutral position again.
Post time: May-11-2020