That position is a good idea to return to in order to keep your shoulders from rounding. These simple tips will give you excellent desk posture. This is often a challenge for employees wanting a better workstation because chairs come with too many functions.
This is why taking the time to learn how to properly adjust your chair is important. We suggest lowering your chair until your thighs are parallel to the floor, with your feet flat on the floor or a footrest. Your goal should be to have your seat pan at a 2-inch space between the back of your knees. The backrest of the chair should also be unlocked to promote movement of your upper body. Finding the perfect distance is as easy as sitting back and extending your arm to where the tips of your middle finger touch the screen.
This method is a great way to prevent craning of the neck. To find the perfect height, try closing your eyes. You should be able to see the address bar when you open your eyes. Depending on the height adjustment functionalities of your computer monitor, you may have to use books or other height adjustment methods.
If the desk is too high, consider raising your chair without compromising your natural posture. If your desk has one of those hard edges, get a wrist rest. Lastly, Do not store anything underneath your desk. A comfortable, ergonomic workspace can help you feel and work at your best.
We suggest keeping these tips in mind every time you start the work day! Kimber has been with Work-Fit for over 14 years and has dedicated her professional career to helping others.
Office workers are at extremely high risk for several different musculoskeletal disorders. Learn to fix your office setup here. Fatigue management in the workplace is an important, though often overlooked, element in human resource supervision.
There are a number of different desk designs out there, offering a variety of shapes, cut-out areas and different heights. From an ergonomic point of view, the most important aspect of your desk is the height. A too-high desktop will cause strain on your forearms as you type, while an overly low desk will cause you to hunch over as you work, straining your back and shoulders. Just as important as the proper desk height is the ability to adjust it throughout the day.
Altering your posture throughout the day not only fights fatigue, but helps to prevent repetitive motion related injuries. This is why sit to stand desks and adjustable height desks have become so popular as part of an ergonomic workstation.
Adjustable height desks are at the forefront of ergonomic desk design, by allowing you to set your entire workstation height to precisely your comfort level, which may vary depending on your task.
Another huge benefit of adjustable height desks is that it allows you to alternate between sitting and standing. Sitting all day has been scientifically shown to increase the risk of high blood pressure, back injury and even death. Spending your entire working day standing can be exhausting and potentially just as damaging, so the ability to alternate between the two postures is ideal.
However, a badly placed monitor can cause neck and shoulder pain, headaches and other symptoms that you may blame on your chair or desk. Here are the most important considerations to remember when it comes to monitor placement:. Angle: Your monitor should be placed at an angle of about 10 to 20 degrees. A greater angle will cause you to hold your head at an uncomfortable angle, leading to neck strain. Height : the top line of your screen should be at or below eye level.
Tilting your head back to try to read your monitor can lead to headaches and neck pain. Lighting: Good lighting ergonomics in the office involve many things, from sufficient lighting — lux , elimination of shadows and dark spots in the room, to removing glare and picking the right color temperature based on the type of work you do. Monitors often come fixed to their stands, making them hard to adjust.
You can try stacking books or reams of printer paper to see what works for you. Once you know what you need, you can go looking for a more permanent solution. Blue light emitted from all the various electronic devices with a screen has been shown to cause eye fatigue, Macular Degeneration, and even blindness. Fortunately this is where technology can actually help with the problem.
If you spend copious amounts of time in front of the monitor or smartphone, use computer glasses that come with a bluelight filter to remove the harmful light from hitting your eyes.
Many office workers suffer from tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries caused by poorly designed keyboards and mice or positioning. Distance: Proper sitting posture dictates where you should place your keyboard. Your elbows should be comfortably at your side rather than behind or in front of you. Therefore, your keyboard should be in front of you at a distance you can comfortably reach with your elbows at your sides. Experts say a desk light is essential for viewing hard copy documents, as it helps prevent glare and Computer Vision Syndrome — a condition affecting up to 90 percent of computer users which causes eyestrain, eye fatigue, dry eyes, light sensitivity, blurred vision, headaches and other symptoms.
In our early to mid 40s, our eyes change dramatically and we all develop a condition called presbyopia, characterized by our inability to focus on near-field objects.
By the time we reach our 60s, we require percent more contrast to view the same documents as we did in our 20s. The key is to choose a task light on an arm that you can manipulate — versus a table lamp that gives off ambient light. Task and ambient lighting schemes have been shown to improve visual comfort and reduce energy consumption by up to 40 percent.
Be sure to position the task light to the side opposite your writing hand, and shine it on paper documents but away from computer monitors to reduce glare. Data shows strong evidence that intermittent standing increases productivity through a reduction in work break time as it leads to fewer and shorter breaks throughout the day. In fact, non-standers took an average of 47 percent more work breaks and each work break was 56 percent longer than that of the standers.
Over a three-day period, non-standers took over twice as much total time on breaks from work as the standers did — clearly having an effect on productivity. Consider putting in a request at the office for a standing desk; more and more employers are making them available to their employees. Experts at Humanscale recommends taking two or three to second breaks each hour to allow your body to recover from periods of repetitive stress.
The productivity app DeskTime found that the highest-performing 10 percent of workers tended to work for 52 consecutive minutes followed by a minute break. So setting a timer to stand up and get away from your desk for a bit may lead to getting more work done, in less time.
If 17 minutes is too long to step away from your Outlook, studies show that even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve your ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods. May we also suggest drinking more water? To provide you with the most relevant and helpful information and to understand which information is beneficial, we may combine your e-mail and website usage information with other information we have about you.
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This content does not have an English version. This content does not have an Arabic version. See more conditions. Healthy Lifestyle Adult health. Products and services. Office ergonomics: Your how-to guide A comfortable work space can help you feel your best. By Mayo Clinic Staff. Thank you for Subscribing Our Housecall e-newsletter will keep you up-to-date on the latest health information.
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