Artists, photographers, marketers and many others spend endless hours working on their laptops, and some of them don’t really know how they can be harming their back which might cause common posture and desk-related injuries.
Changing your position is also good for your eyes, which need to be refocused at different distances.
- Adjust the desk height
The aim is to avoid needing your hand to be bending up/down from their wrists while typing, or raising up your arms higher than perpendicular to the floor.
Sitting: put your arms straight out while sitting down, and make sure your hands are directly over the keyboard, just enough above the keyboard to type.
Standing: put your arms straight out in front of you, parallel to the floor. Your desk height should be just enough below your hands to accommodate your keyboard without having to bend your wrists.
- Keyboard VS Screen Height
The height for your laptop keyboard is not the best height for your laptop screen.
If you’re working solely on a laptop, it’s better to connect it to an external display. Otherwise, you’ll need to put the display at the correct height first, and then deal with the keyboard.
Where to Put Displays?
Your display needs to be raised up from the desk, so that its top edge is just below your eyes, and no lower.
- Chair Height Adjustment
You need to adjust the chair so that your head looks straight into the screen. If your chair doesn’t adjust, either adjust the display, or the desk, or put a riser under the display.
- Support your Leg & Back
When you sit in the chair correctly, leaning back, it must completely support your back, so that you can sit straight up and look directly into the screen.
- Alarm/Reminder
So everything looks perfectly settled, it’s still possible to spend way too long a time staring at the screen, intently focused on the task at hand.
You can easily do this on your mobile phone at as frequent intervals as possible so that you can take a quick break.
- Mobiles & tablets DO count
This is not surprising; if bending for a keyboard is bad for your back and neck, so is bending for a mobile or a tablet. Pay attention to your screen time.
CONCLUSION
I think nobody is likely to stop working on a computer any time soon, so we should all look after our health to be able to stay productive.