How to Sit Better: A Simple Posture Guide

Most posture advice asks you to hold a position that nobody can sustain past mid-morning. A more useful goal is a setup that makes a comfortable position the default, so you are not spending willpower on sitting up straight.

Set the chair before anything else

Start from the ground. Feet flat on the floor, knees roughly level with your hips, and the backrest supporting the curve of your lower back. If your chair is too high for your feet to rest flat, use a footrest or a stack of books rather than perching on the edge.

Armrests should let your shoulders drop rather than pushing them up towards your ears. If they get in the way of pulling the chair in, lower them or take them off.

Then the screen and keyboard

• Top of the screen at or just below eye level, about an arm's length away.
• Laptop on a stand with a separate keyboard and mouse — a laptop alone forces you to choose between a bad neck position and a bad wrist position.
• Keyboard close enough that your elbows stay near your sides at roughly 90 degrees.
• Documents and second monitors directly in front of you, not off to one side you always twist towards.
• Phone at eye level for long calls, or on speaker — cradling it against your shoulder is a reliable way to irritate your neck.

There is no perfect sitting posture, only a good starting position and regular changes away from it. Your next posture matters more than your current one.

The part people skip

Even a well-set-up workstation becomes uncomfortable if you do not leave it. Stand up every thirty minutes, even briefly. Take calls walking. Move your laptop to a standing surface for part of the day if you have one. The aim is variety, not one heroically correct position.

If you have adjusted your setup, built in regular movement, and still finish every day with neck or back pain, an assessment will usually find a strength or mobility limitation that the chair cannot fix on its own.

• #posture
• #ergonomics
• #desk-work
• #neck-pain