With more aches and pains than I care to admit to at my age, I did what we all do when we need answers to life’s many questions; I Googled it!
After finding many answers I didn’t like, such as “as your body ages…” and “going to the gym regularly can reduce…” Finally, I found an answer I could work with, literally.
Set up your office ergonomically!
After reading an awesome blog titled “Working from home? Here’s how to set up your workstation ergonomically”, I have made multiple changes to my space that have improved my productivity, alertness, and dreaded aches and pains.
My first change was adding a footrest. Wow, what a difference that makes. I went back and forth, or up and down in this case, in my chair over and over again, trying to get the right height to get my feet on the floor while keeping my arms flat with my desk. Every day I was adjusting the height of my chair. A simple $30 purchase removed this daily annoyance, and now my legs don’t feel like they are being cut off trying to reach the floor, and now they are at the correct angle, my forearms aren’t sore.
Once my new footrest was worn in, I moved on to the lighting.
If you read my recent blog, “Juggling Work-Life Balance”, you would know my office location and the lighting issues that may arise with it, so in an attempt to reduce my headaches, I splurged and bought myself a new desk lamp.
Finding the right light for my space created a new type of headache! Purchase one was unsuccessful; the white LED’s were too bright and added to my headaches. Purchase number two was perfect for my area, but the bulb was on the same frequency as my webcam, so my Zoom meetings had wonderful strobe lighting effects.....wonderful if you were in a nightclub, that is! Luckily, the third time was a charm. An apparently simple task, ha! But at least the headaches stopped.
With my posture and lighting fixed, what else could I possibly need to change, you might ask? My wireless mouse. This one was an impulse buy, but one my wrist will forever thank me for! Working in business support, my hand is on the mouse for most of the day, and anyone else in my line of work can relate to the ache in the wrist and pain in your thumb from being in the same position for extended periods of time: my solution, a vertical mouse!
Who would have thought that improving my working from home setup would have addressed my issues so easily!
The moral of my story is, don’t settle on your aches and pains being solely caused by getting older; there could be other reasons with simple solutions.
Hannah Watts; Business Support Manager
IPA Topic: HSE
