Ergonomic Seating Saves The Day

How many hours do you spend at your computer on an average day? (Too many?) Do you have any pain in your back, shoulders, neck, elbows, or wrists? (All of the above?) Have you done everything possible to make your workstation pain-free? The secret to working long hours at the PC without pain isn’t a secret … it’s a science. It all starts with a good ergonomic chair …

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who have suffered back pain and those who have yet to do so. I crossed that bridge decades ago. Before a fateful motorcycle accident, I didn’t have an inkling how debilitating it is to live with back and shoulder pain. Lets just say that I have slightly more than an inkling, these days …

Over the years, I’ve learned how to cope with it.

Things got out of hand when I was working a full-time computer graphics job during the day and moonlighting writing computer graphics books at home at night (while also taking night college courses). It wasn’t unusual for me to spend 18 hours a day in a number of not-so ergonomic desk chairs. Needless to say, I was a physical wreck. If a body part wasn’t in pain, it was going numb. (And lemmetellya, at the point that your butt goes numb, you know you’ve been hunched over the computer for just a wee bit too long.)

When working for someone else, you’re at their mercy with regard to ergonomic seating and desk arrangements. In my dearly departed corporate years, I became adept at taking things into my own hands … scouring up the most comfortable desk chairs I could find through whatever corporate means.

Radar O’Reilly would have been proud.

Things got a whole lot better when I started working from home full-time. I now had control over my destiny … well, at least as it related to my desk chair. With a few bucks in my pocket, I was able to buy a series of inexpensive pseudo ergonomic desk chairs. The key words in that sentence? Series, inexpensive, and pseudo. I ended up buying one crummy chair after another. They’d work great out of the box, before quickly turning into rubbish.

That all changed the day that I brought home a wonderful Herman Miller Aeron chair, many moons ago …

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