Are You Aware Of How You Are Sitting In Your Office Chair?

If you study people’s postures when you are out and about you will often find it’s easy to spot those who work at a PC all day.

They are the ones who often carry a certain stiffness in the neck and shoulders as well as restricted lateral movement. The most common cause of this is usually poor positioning relative the desk and VDU screen and also not taking sufficient breaks during the day’s work.

Whilst these symptoms are often easy to spot in others, they aren’t so obvious in ourselves and it’s only when we stand in front of a mirror we begin to see we are burdened by the same problems. Although shoulder and neck pain act as a timely reminder from our body that something we are doing is not helping our body’s well-being and comfort.

So how do we become more aware of how we are sitting and what can be done to correct bad habits?

Assuming you have your office chair properly adjusted next make sure you are addressing your workspace correctly. Key to this is the relationship between you and your monitor ensuring you are properly set up.

Here are some vital points:

Screen Height – your eyes need to be set at or slightly below the topmost menu bar on you screen.

Screen Angle – monitor should be angled slightly backwards such that your line of site is square to it.

Screen Alignment – body, keyboard and monitor should be centered together. Imagine a line starting from your nose through the middle of your keyboard’s spacebar and finishing in the center of your screen.

Screen Distance – as a broad rule of thumb the screen should be approximately an arm’s length away. This will vary from user to user depending on eye sight and body size, make sure you can clearly read on screen text clearly while keeping your back in good contact and supported by your chair back, avoiding leaning forward.

Although it’s probably easier to set up a flat panel monitor than an old bulky CRT monitor it still isn’t always easy to get things just right. An LCD monitor maybe a lot lighter nonetheless it’s still a lump of equipment sitting on your desk which will rarely be moved allowing bad posture habits to set in.

Screen height can be particularly awkward with the stand height often being fixed and frequently too low. You can improvise and build it up with books however it doesn’t look very pretty.

The best answer is to invest in an LCD monitor arm, the design and flexibility of modern VDU arms allows us to position our screen very precisely, fine tuning it until finding perfect positioning.

There are additional benefits as well, when you need clear desk space to carry out other tasks, or you want to discuss something you have on screen with a colleague or visitor, an LCD monitor arm allows effortless movement of the screen to where it needs to be.

I’ll return to this topic in a future post to look into further ways of helping posture and comfort in the office.