What are Ergonomics?

The definition on ergonomics is “the study of people’s efficiency in their working environment” (definition credit: Google/Oxford Languages). Ergonomics are much more than just posture. Posture is the position of a person’s body. In our case, the position we are in while sitting or standing at a computer workstation. Posture is an important variable. But when we add the variable of working for an extended period of time, it’s important that our ergonomics aims at a well-rounded practice of multiple variables.

What are Ergonomics?

Sitting and standing at a computer for long periods of time delivers a high risk of injury. It’s up to us to ensure we are working in a safe working environment. I understand that sometimes we are at the mercy of external factors. A lot of work just has to be done on a computer. Often, there is a lot of that work. This requires us to work in the same vulnerable position for long periods of time, which brings an increased risk of injury. However, there are plenty of human factors we can practice in order to maintain safe work at a computer. Today, I’ll talk about 4 subtopics of computer ergonomics that are very important for safety and health. They are sleep, breathing, hydration, and posture.

1. How to Sleep for Better Posture

We use intention and pay attention to the way we move during work hours and exercise. We overlook the fact that sleep quality can also help improve a person’s good posture and lower risk of injury. We rest better, recover better, and wake up feeling refreshed when our sleep quality is good. Sitting with good posture at a computer desk for 8 hours is an endurance event. It takes strength, energy, and balance. The less our sleep quality is, the quicker we get tired the next day. The earlier we get tired in the day, the quicker our good posture turns into bad posture. Conversely, using healthy sleeping habits will directly improve our posture, safety and health throughout the next work day. Below are some good habits that helped me improve my sleep quality.

1a. I chose a good pillow

For many years, I slept on a pillow that didn’t support my head and neck enough. I didn’t realize it until I tried a new pillow. This one provides plenty of support for my head, but not too much that would overextend my neck.

1b. I silence my phone at night

It always seemed like a necessity to keep my phone on and in the same room when I slept. I did it for years. I never realized how much it disrupted my sleep until I finally silenced my phone at night. And I didn’t only silence the ringer, because I would still be tempted to check my phone if I woke up in the middle of the night. So, I placed my phone in a completely different room at night. I did this for a few reasons.

I didn’t want to be tempted to check my phone when I woke up to use the restroom at night. If the phone is just sitting there on the table next to the bed, it would be super easy to touch the screen to see what calls or messages I’ve received. If they are any, my mind would start thinking about the context of those calls and messages, as well as how I was going to reply to them. Not to mention, the light from the phone screen, even for a second, would cause a disturbance by itself. All of this would wake my brain up more and more, which would take me longer to fall back asleep after a normal restroom break.

1c. Make my bedroom as dark as possible

I minimize the amount of light in my room at night as much as possible. I don’t use an alarm clock because the displays on most of them put out a good amount of light. So I use my iPad to wake me up because it doesn’t put out light when it’s not in use. When I set my alarm at night, I also dim the brightness setting on my iPad all the way down. This way, if I wake up a little early and need to check the time, my eyes will be subjected to the minimal amount of light.

It’s also important for me to mention that I setup my iPad to NOT receive any text messages, phone calls, or emails at any time. This is because I would be tempted to roll over and check them when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Finally, I put up some blackout curtains over my blinds recently. I thought my blinds were making my room pretty dark. The curtains made my room much darker. I didn’t realize how much of a sleep quality improvement I would get until after I installed blackout curtains. For more tips I use to improve my sleep quality, I wrote an article titled How to Sleep for Better Posture.

2. Improve Your Posture by Breathing More Effectively

Breathing is an important factor of having good posture at a computer. When I sat at a desk 40 hours per week, physical and mental stress would cause me shallow breath and posture that was poor. My shoulder tension was out of control. The natural curves in my spine were always out of alignment.

It felt like the air I was breathing would barely pass below the airway in my neck, much less into my lungs. As soon as it would enter my lungs, I would exhale it out. The air was in my lungs long enough to keep me conscious. Instead of letting my breath work for me efficiently, my brain and body were always in more of a defensive state. All of my muscles were either compressed or overextended. They were all tight, especially breathing muscles like the diaphragm, abdominals, and muscles throughout my rib cage. Below are the 3 main points I’ve learned since I’ve started practicing breathwork.

2a. I needed to increase the amount of air I was taking into my lungs.

Physical and mental stress from my desk job were causing shallow breathing all day and night. This was affecting my general safety and health. The first of the breathing exercises I tried was called box breathing. Box breathing is a very basic breathing exercise where you breathe in, hold, breathe out, then refrain from breathing (for the same count on each of the steps). For example, the first count I used was 4 seconds. I would inhale slowly for 4 seconds, hold my breath for 4 seconds, exhale slowly for 4 seconds, and then refrain from breathing for 4 seconds. All 4 steps are the same amount of time. That’s why it’s called box breathing exercises. Eventually, I would increase the amount of time for each from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.

2b. I needed to increase the amount of time air spent in my lungs.

To do this, I needed to get used to taking slower, deeper breaths. Ironically, this would mean breathing less number of times. Box breathing also helped me increase the amount of time air spent in my lungs.

2c. I needed to breathe through my nose as much as possible, not my mouth.

This goes for both inhaling and exhaling. It doesn’t only apply when doing breathing exercises. It applies all day, even during movement habits. I needed to decrease the number of times I breathed through my mouth.

There are many reasons that breathing through the nose is more efficient. For me, the biggest reason had to do with decreasing headaches. I think overusing my jaw muscles to breathe through my mouth used to cause excessive muscle tension throughout my head, neck, and face. Also, I used to be a chronic mouth breather, on both the inhale and exhale. I believe my jaw muscles were one of my most overused muscle groups. To read more about how breath work has helped me create a safe working environment, check out my article titled Improve Your Posture By Breathing More Effectively.

3. How Much Water Do I Need to Drink Per Day?

The amount of water I drink (or don’t drink) is directly connected to my risk of injury caused by sitting at a desk. When I’m dehydrated, my muscles tense up and tighten much quicker, causing my posture to suffer. When I stay hydrated throughout the day, my posture is always easier to maintain. Improved posture is just one of the benefits of drinking water for me. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. But, I an article about how I decided on my average number of ounces per day. The article is titled How Much Water Do I Need to Drink Per Day? It may give you some human factors that’ll help you decide on your own amount of water to drink.

4. Good Computer Desk Posture

The average computer user sits at a desk 8 hours a day, 40 hours per week, 2000 hours per year. We can’t keep talking about our poor sitting posture without taking action to maintain a safe working environment. Reducing risk of injury caused by prolonged sitting is a very attainable goal. We just need to make small changes to our daily habits that will create the largest improvements over time. Below, I’m going to share a few simple posture cues that are easily actionable, for working both at a sitting or standing desk.

The 4 main variables I follow to improve my posture are:

4a. Don’t work in one position for more than 30 minutes.

Sometimes I will work longer if I feel good physically and I’m being productive mentally. In that case, working 1 hour in the same position is always the limit for me. Then, I take a short break and work in a different position when I return to my computer desk.

4b. The top of my monitor screen is always eye level, regardless if I’m sitting or standing at my computer.

This habit has decreased my headaches and neck pain significantly. I used to keep my monitor too low. I would also work on a laptop without an extended monitor, which is not a safe work habit.

4c. The keyboard and mouse should be just below elbow level.

I never want my elbow to be below the desk level. This would cause me to activate my bicep to lift my hands onto the keyboard and mouse. Keeping my bicep activated all day is a bad habit I used to have. It caused pain in my shoulder tendons. Now that I keep my elbow above desk level, my bicep doesn’t activate and my shoulder pain is gone.

4d. Feet should always be flat on the floor (or a footrest).

My bad posture habit with my feet used to be activating my hamstrings to pull my feet underneath my chair and my body. My toes would be resting on the floor, but my heels would be up in the air. This caused a lot of muscle confusion between the front and back of my ankles. It also caused a lot of dysfunction in my ankle and knee joints.

The above good posture variables apply when I’m working in a sitting or standing position. If you’d like to do a deeper dive on how to improve your posture while sitting at a computer, you can download my free Computer Posture Checklist.

Ergonomics aims to create safe working environment while reducing risk of injury. Sleep, breathing, hydration, and posture are all ergonomic variables that have improved my safety and health all-around.

Thanks for your interest in sitting posture. If you’ve read this far, congratulations! You’re taking valuable steps to create a safe work setup and to reduce your risk of injury. That’s something to be proud of.

If this article was helpful, check out my book titled “45 Ways to Improve Computer Posture.” It’s available in both digital and paperback versions.  

>>> Click here to pick up your copy

This book explains how to improve your posture through different variables of health and wellness. These include sitting posture, standing posture, sleep, hydration, and breathing. Poor posture is not just how we sit at a computer. The health habits we practice, 24 hours a day, are directly related to how good (or bad) our computer posture is.

Go to SittingPosture.com/book to learn more.

Take care,

Todd Bowen

P.S. You can sign up for my free computer posture newsletter here.