My plan was to go through some tips for setting up a comfortable work station one piece at a time, starting with the chair. But even after two posts on the topic of sitting, can you believe that I still have a lot more to say about it? Today, though, I’m going to tear myself away from that topic and discuss monitors, prompted by an email from a friend reporting back pain and wondering about the best way to position multiple screens.
The first thing you have to realize when thinking about monitor placement is that your eyes exert almost complete control over your body. Notice if someone walks into a room, without thinking, your head turns to see who’s coming in. When sitting at your work station, your monitor should be right smack in front of you — no exceptions! Continuously looking over to one side will create muscular asymmetry and tension, not to mention possible nerve impingement.
OK, so you have the middle of the monitor centered with your belly button, but how far away should it be?
Before you position your monitor, get comfortable in your chair. From there, wheel yourself into your work station while maintaining your optimal sitting posture. Then adjust your monitor distance so that you can easily see what needs to be seen without moving your body — more specifically, without having your back leave the backrest of the chair.
You may have heard that you should position your monitor at arm’s length, but that is just a very general and inaccurate guideline as the length of your arms has nothing to do with visual acuity. I recommend pushing your chair away from your monitor far enough so that you cannot read the screen anymore and then slowly moving forward until you can comfortably read the screen without leaning forward or squinting. Then you can stick your arm out toward the monitor to measure your ideal monitor distance. Some of you will be at arm’s length, others a few inches closer or beyond. Be aware that this distance can change with age but also with the time of the day, as your eyes may fatigue.
Stay tuned as I’ll tackle monitor height, angles and multiple monitor placement in future posts.
Categories: 
Tags: 
This is a problem I often see, that people just buy ergonomic furniture thinking that it will automatically improve the situation but it doesn’t. There is no universally “correct” ergonomic position and as you point out, it does change. That’s why we give everyone in the office an ajustable monitor arm. Aside from anything, that means that it can be adjusted at any time as the need requires and we don’t always have to replace them if someone leaves. Still, if it needs replacing, we replace it.