Working from home can turn you into a hunchback!

Indeed it isn’t just those of my generation that are complaining about the self same thing - as I have a daughter who now works permanently from home and she can be sat in the same position for hours and hours on end and tells me that when she has finished with her work, she can barely sit or stand upright for some time. I suspect that back, neck, and shoulder pain has become the new normal for many of us who slave over a smallish screen for hours on end. Indeed, with Covid-19 demanding that more and more of us work from home the problem has apparently become widespread; in fact those issues mentioned earlier have been described as a “tidal wave” of physical conditions that have developed because of bad posture.

You see, in a proper regulated office environment, I am told that workers have to walk away from their screens for a short but regular period of time, but working from home no such protocol can be exercised so it seems that millions of us are staggering about like the hunchback of Notre Dame. That might be a minor exaggeration, but if you work from home - have you developed a rather unattractive stoop lately? For instance, your head typically weighs around 12lb. When bent forwards at a 45-degree angle, it become equivalent to 50lbs, which puts a huge strain of a person neck. Go on, you think about it! If you are like me and have this problem, I wonder if you have tried to raise the hight of your laptop, or forced yourself to sit back further in your chair to nullify some of the inevitable slouching that follows even a short session of work?

In fact a friend of mine seems to have conquered this problem by standing whilst working on his computer keyboard, but I find this positioning quite difficult and a more than a little unnatural when working for more than just a few minutes at a time. I have tried a number of ideas to make my working life less physically demanding (please don’t laugh!) such as placing my laptop on a pile of books when working, to bolstering my office chair with various cushions and then altering my bodies angle-of-dangle so as to combat severe back and neck pain. Nevertheless, it might be a good idea for me to resolve this problem sooner rather than later otherwise I might be condemned for all-time to lurch about my house exclaiming “The bells….the bells!” in a most unfortunate manner. I suppose you could try to get your partner in life to give you a nice massage when you’ve finished that stint of work crouched over a laptop; the problem being with this approach, if I am anything to go by, is that this might cause her to accuse you of being “…a bit of a perv.” Which isn’t very nice at all now is it?