Pay attention to workplace ergonomics
For the past year or so, I’ve had this consistently and mildly annoying, yet sometimes debilitating affliction. It has been a real pain in the neck; literally. You see, I work in a place where you are never more than 5 feet away from a computer. It is your umbilical cord to the mother-ship. It is your best friend. Going computer-less for a day is like getting soft-serve without the sprinkles. It just isn’t right.
Personally, I like to think that my computer loves me as much as I love her. She’s a bit codependent and that’s ok by me. She keeps me mildly entertained and helps me get stuff done. In fact, I have such a good relationship with my computer that I thought it would be a brilliant idea to add another one to my “family” at work. So for the past year or so, I had a laptop and desktop computer sitting right next to each other. I’d read e-mail on one and write documents on the other. Brilliant! I am now twice as productive. Or so I thought.
You see, the monitor for my desktop was about a foot above my laptop. Unbeknownst to me, my head would be doing a quick back-and-forth between the two a couple thousand times a day. I hardly noticed. I only noticed the flurry of emails I could now produce. With twice the screen real-state, my ability to absorb the stunning gossip content on MSN during my lunch had now doubled. I was enthralled.
However, about six months ago, I developed a terrible pain in my neck. I thought it was caused by just using my laptop too much. I cut back on my laptop use and that seemed to help a bit, but the problem persisted on and off.
After coming back from my month away from work (and computers) last Sunday, I was completely healthy and pain-free. I was stunned, however, when on Wednesday I woke up to an incredibly sore neck. My range of motion was 90 degrees (not 180!). The pain got worse on Thursday.
I then turned to my best friend, my computer, for the answer. Turns out, one of the common causes of “Tech Neck,” (no, it’s not contagious) is the exact setup I have been using at work for the past year!
So on Friday I “broke-up” with my second machine, and settled in for a day of 50% productivity. Lo and behold, my neck actually felt fine most of the day. Sticking with this approach the past few days, I’ve seen rapid improvement in my condition. I can’t tell you how many hours of lost sleep and frustration I’ve had to tolerate with my neck issue. I’m just glad I caught the cause before it did irreparable damage.
Lesson learned. Take the time and spare no expense to make your workplace setup as perfect for your body as you can. There are a lot of resources online about workplace ergonomics. Read up!
I just wrote an article on workstation ergonomics that addresses this, but I didn’t know this condition had a name! My article is based primarily on my own experiences and observations, but it does offer specific suggestions that I have found work. For me, at least. Good luck.
Tim Flanagan
January 30, 2007 at 5:35 am
I didnt have a contraption handy to elevate my laptop (and at any rate, I needed the keyboard on it easily accessible), so I just stopped trying to use the two computers at once!
The key lesson here, is that if you are working on two computers at the same time, the monitors need to be at the same height, and very close together, otherwise your neck will eventually cry uncle.
ravisraman
January 17, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Sounds like the problem may have been partially due to the desktop monitor being higher. Did elevating the laptop help at all?
Scott
January 17, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I’ve got aches and pains in my neck and back too. I think it has to do with net addiction.Have you tried out desk top yoga? It helps with those terrible pains. There are some good resources, on the net though:)
healthybpm
January 17, 2007 at 10:39 am