Advice for Good Office Ergonomics

ByEmily Dolloff

Let’s look at how to keep your body comfortable and healthy when you interact physically with your Mac. In a word: ergonomics. You’ll find it easier to focus and be productive if nothing hurts. Plus, you want to avoid long-term problems like carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic neck strain.

While some workplace setups may be outside your control, there are usually ways to improve your ergonomics. Here’s what to check and adjust to make your workspace more comfortable and productive. We also recommend working through the Cornell Ergonomic Workstation Advisor, a 35-question worksheet.

Chair Setup

Your chair is the linchpin of an ergonomic office setup. Adjust the seat height so your feet rest flat on the floor and your knees are at roughly 90º–120º. Use a stable footrest if you can’t put your feet flat on the ground without compressing your thighs. Note that if you are smaller or larger than average, you may need a chair designed for your size.

You should be able to sit up straight comfortably, which may be aided by a lower back support. If your chair lacks one, consider adding a firm bolster or even a rolled towel for more support. Make sure armrests support your elbows without forcing you to raise your shoulders.

Once your chair is adjusted correctly, it’s time to consider the desk surface, which affects the placement of your display, keyboard, and mouse or trackpad.

Screen Position and Height

When it comes to your Mac’s display, there are two vital measurements to reduce neck and shoulder strain: the distance from your eyes and the height off the desk surface.

Roughly speaking, the display should be positioned at arm’s length, or 18–36 inches (45–91 cm) away. However, that depends on your vision—if the text isn’t clear at the recommended distance, you should either have your prescription checked or move the display until you can read it easily. If you find yourself bringing it too close, use the Larger Text options in System Settings > Displays to make the text readable at a reasonable distance.

For height, with modern large displays, aim to have your eye level about a quarter of the way down the display, so that three-quarters of the display is below your eye level. That generates a slight downward gaze to the center of the screen. If you wear bifocals, position the display a little lower to account for how you raise your head to look through the different viewing zones in your lenses.

Some displays have highly configurable stands, making it easy to adjust their height. For those that offer only tilt adjustments, you can raise the screen by placing a properly sized book or printer paper underneath it; just make sure it’s stable. If your desk doesn’t lend itself to the necessary positioning, a monitor arm could make it easier to adjust.

It’s important to minimize glare from lights above you or windows behind you. Tilting the top of the display slightly away from you can reduce glare and enhance comfort, but more significant adjustments may be necessary to avoid harsh natural light. If you need bright light for reading physical documents, opt for task lighting and keep the room lighting indirect. Regardless, you should always adjust the Mac’s brightness to match the room lighting; the Automatically Adjust Brightness switch in System Settings > Displays can help. If you use your Mac before bed, turning on Night Shift may improve sleep.

What about multiple displays? Depending on their size, you may inadvertently create a situation where the text is too far away to read comfortably, causing you to lean in. Nor do you want to be working with your head turned all the time.

If you have a primary display, position it in front of you and put the secondary display off to the side, angled in. If you have two identical displays, angle them in slightly to create a visual arc and sit so that you can work comfortably on the inner halves of each screen. Those connecting a laptop to two displays can keep it below them. However you arrange your displays, click Arrange in System Settings > Displays to rearrange the virtual screens so they match your physical layout.

Keyboard and Mouse/Trackpad Placement

For comfortable typing and mousing, your hands should be level and straight, with your elbows comfortably close to your body and your shoulders relaxed. To make that happen, the keyboard and pointing device should be at elbow height when you’re sitting and close enough that you don’t need to lean forward. The mouse or trackpad should be as close to the keyboard as possible so you don’t have to reach for it.

Getting the height of the keyboard and pointing device right—while also keeping the display at the right height—can be tricky because many desks aren’t very adjustable. If the desk is too high and can’t be lowered, consider an adjustable keyboard tray to reposition the keyboard and mouse/trackpad at the correct height.

It’s also important that you don’t compress your wrist by pressing down on the desk surface or even a soft wrist rest. To rest your hands when you’re not typing, use a cushioned palm rest in front of your keyboard.

Special Considerations for Laptops

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to maintain good ergonomics on a laptop because there’s no separation between the keyboard and the display. That’s fine for shorter work sessions and when you have no control over your environment, such as on an airplane or in a coffee shop. But if you work on a laptop all day long, choose one of two basic options to improve your ergonomics:

  • Continue to use the laptop’s keyboard and trackpad at a good typing height, but add an external display at the ergonomic viewing height. You can continue to use the laptop’s display for ambient apps—such as Messages, Calendar, and Music—that you glance at and use briefly.
  • Elevate the laptop so its display is at the correct viewing height, and add an external keyboard and mouse/trackpad at the correct typing height. A wide variety of laptop stands are available for this purpose.

The first approach may be more expensive, but it can increase productivity by allowing you to view more content on the screen at once.

Movement and Breaks

No matter how ergonomic your setup is, it’s terrible for the human body to remain in one position for extended periods. Research suggests that sitting for more than 8 hours daily, especially without physical activity, is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, depression, and even cognitive decline. Luckily, it’s easy to reduce these risks:

  • Change positions frequently; chairs that allow movement can help activate muscles and improve circulation.
  • Take regular breaks every 30–60 minutes. Standing or walking for 5 minutes is ideal, but even a minute or two helps. Even if you work at a standing desk, you must still move around.
  • Consider a sit-stand desk that allows you to switch between sitting and standing.
  • Look away from your screen at least every 20 minutes for 20 seconds, focusing on an object at least 20 feet away.
  • Exercise regularly to counterbalance being sedentary—experts recommend a weekly regimen of 150–300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75–150 minutes of vigorous exercise.

Remember: Small ergonomic adjustments can make a big difference in comfort. If you experience persistent discomfort in an office environment, consult with your supervisor or HR department about your ergonomic equipment options. Your organization may also provide access to an ergonomics expert who can come to your workspace and ensure that your chair and other workspace items are adjusted for optimal comfort.

(Featured image by iStock.com/dragana991)

Social Media: Don’t let poor ergonomics get in the way of getting your work done. Get expert advice on adjusting your chair, positioning your display, and arranging your desk to prevent discomfort and boost productivity at your Mac.

Similar Posts

  • Expand your mind…er..text

    Speed Up Your Fingers with Text Expansion

    With all the advances in computing and communications, it’s amazing that–after nearly 150 years!–we still use the keyboard layout from the world’s first practical typewriter for entering text into our Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Sure there are some improving dictation solutions out there but typing is by far how we input text. But we have not gotten that much better as typists, nor do we enjoy typing more–if anything, we increasingly abbreviate to avoid typing, hence “LOL, BRB, etc.” Text messaging aside, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to type less without compromising meaning or making your text look like it was composed by a trained monkey? Thanks to text expansion features built into OS X and iOS, and extended with third-party utilities, you can.

    For basic text expansion capabilities in OS X, look in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, and in iOS 9, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. For both, you can enter a phrase, and a shortcut that expands into that phrase when typed and followed by a space or punctuation character. (Tip: If text expansion doesn’t work in a Mac app like Mail or Safari, make sure Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement is selected.)

    If you’re signed into the same iCloud account on both your Mac and your iPhone, for instance, the text expansions sync between them automatically. So, you can type “smh” and tap the Space bar to get “Shaking my head!” typed out for you, regardless of what device you’re using. (Another tip: don’t create abbreviations that you will also want to type normally. It might seem like a good idea to use “np” for “No Problem,” but that will get in the way of talking about Nurse Practitioners.)

    With such a useful feature built into OS X and iOS, why would you want to spend money on a third-party utility, like “**TextExpander**”:https://smilesoftware.com/textexpander (Mac and iOS), “**Typinator**”:http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/ (Mac), or “**TypeIt4Me**”:http://www.ettoresoftware.com/products/typeit4me/. Unfortunately, OS X’s text expansion feature doesn’t work in all apps (it likely won’t work if the app lacks the Edit > Substitutions > Text Replacement menu command). The interface for creating new substitutions is cramped and hard to work with, you can’t configure the trigger characters that cause abbreviations to expand, and you can’t include text with styles, variable text like the date, or even graphics.

    That’s where text expansion utilities shine. They can include styled text and graphics in expansions, insert the current date and time, respect case when expanding abbreviations, include the contents of the clipboard in expanded text, automatically fix common typos, create fill-in-the-blanks snippets that you customize on each expansion, and much more.

    Here are some ideas for the kinds of things you might want to turn over to your computer for typing:
    Long or complex words or phrases, such as scientific names. Aedes aegypti, anyone?

    *Your address, phone number, and email address. One of my favorites is “@d” which inserts my email address. I get real tired of typing email address, phone numbers, etc. Text expansion speeds that up!

    *Boilerplate text for common email replies.

    *The current date and/or time.

    *Special characters, so blb could expand to the British pound symbol £.

    *Unix commands for Terminal, such as using ssh to log in to a remote computer.

    I am sure you can come up with dozens that might work for you and speed up your typing. So think about what bit of text you might want expand automatically and give text expansion a try today!

  • B.B. King – The King of the Blues

    For more than half a century, Riley B. King – better known as B.B. King – defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them classics. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of The South gravitated, and it supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues.

    B.B.’s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis, and later to a ten-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” became so popular, it was expanded and became the “Sepia Swing Club.” Soon B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King.

    In the mid-1950s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.’s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille.

    B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He received NARAS’ Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987, and has received honorary doctorates from Tougaloo(MS) College in 1973; Yale University in 1977; Berklee College of Music in 1982; Rhodes College of Memphis in 1990; Mississippi Valley State University in 2002 and Brown University in 2007. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi.

    B.B. King came to Vermont many times and I had the pleasure of being at several of his concerts. He died last year at the age of 90 and was performing to sold out crowds right up until he died. B.B. King is gone but the –The Thrill is Gone- lives forever.