4 Ergonomic Tips While Working From Home

When you are working from home, it is natural that you don’t sit the same way as if you were working in an office. While you know that it is important to maintain a good posture, the truth is that you are in the comfort of your own home. You may not have an ergonomic office chair to sit on and even if you have, you may simply prefer to work sitting on your couch. 

Discover the best home office chairs. 

With more and more people working from home due to the new coronavirus pandemic, it is crucial that you take some measures to prevent back and neck pain. 

4 Ergonomic Tips While Working From Home

#1: Stay Off The Couch:

As you can imagine, the first tip when you are working from home is that you should simply stay off the couch. While your couch may be extremely comfortable and appealing, it’s not a good option when you are working. 

After all, when you’re sitting, you do want to be in as neutral of a position as possible. That means you want your spine to be similar to how it is when you’re standing. So when you’re sitting on the couch, you’re actually promoting your spine to a curve in the opposite direction, which can actually increase pressure on your spine up to 85%.

Take a look at these top design tips for an ergonomic home office.

#2: Sit Up:

Sitting up is not only sitting straight but pushing your chair’s height to the maximum height you can. Why? 

One of the things that tend to happen is that when you lower your office chair, you may have a tendency to lift your arms and wrists to reach the keyboard of your laptop. So, when you set your chair as high as possible, you’ll be in a more neutral position which is good for your back and overall body.  

In case you are sitting on a dining chair for example and you don’t have the option to raise it, just add some cushions and pillows. 

Notice that since you will probably have your feet dangling, you want to add a box of books under our feet to ensure they are flat on the ground. 

Make sure you do these 5 stretches while working from home. 

#3: Sit Back:

In case you usually experience neck strain, then you absolutely need to sit back. It’s imperative. The truth is that neck strain is likely from when you’re leaning over to look at your monitor or your back is leaning forward, but your head is up looking at your monitor. The best thing you can do is try to really use the back of your chair. And again, if you have a regular kitchen chair, I would suggest putting a pillow on the back of your chair and try to really use the full back of your chair, because if you’re leaning forward, then it creates next strain when you’re looking up at your monitor. You don’t want to look up.

Check out these ultimate office chair posture tips.

#4: Protect Your Eyes:

If you want to try to reduce eyestrain, there’s a “20-20-20” rule. So if you’re looking at your computer screen for 20 minutes, for 20 seconds, you should look away from your computer for 20 seconds at something that’s 20 feet away every 20 minutes.