Category: General

In part 2 of this series I talked about making work & life balance which I think is a good lead in to this topic of ergonomics & wellness. This has been a concern of mine for many years because I started having pains that were eventually linked to repetitive stress. Since I am not going to stop spending 12 to 20 hours a day in front of a screen I needed to figure out some ways to manage my self better.

I mentioned some of the gear that I use in part 2, specifically the Logitech Ergo K860 keyboard and MX Master 3 mouse which are both ergonomic, but I did not talk much about the rest of my ergonomic setup. Let’s dive into some of those details now.

Desk stuff

For years I used a glass top, L-shaped desk which served me well but was not very ergo friendly. I retired it 3 years ago but kept it as a storage table for my home servers until COVID turned my house into the Himmelstein Academy of Home Based Academia and my older Dude claimed it for his bedroom based classroom.

When I retired that desk I searched far and wide for the work space I wanted. I had long envisioned myself sitting behind a beautiful desk of rich mahogany surrounded by many leather bound books… wait that was a butchered line from Anchorman… in all reality I had no idea what I wanted but I figured I would know it when I saw it. I had a few criteria:

• sturdy & would last a long time
• no drawers to hide clutter in
• no keyboard tray under the desk
• ability to use as a standing desk
• no reflective surface

I ended up getting a Jarvis standing desk from Fully. I chose the 78 x 30″ Bamboo desk and it has been serving me very well. I opted against the swooped curve at the front and take full advantage of the surface.

Standing at my desk vs sitting

I get antsy if I sit for too long. The idea of a standing desk was very appealing to me, but everyone around me told me that it was a fad thing and that I would not use it nearly as much as I thought I would. Cut to 3 years later when I stand at my desk numerous times a day and I am thrilled with my decision.

I find that I sit when I am doing highly focused activities such as writing, creating, learning, or coding. The times that I consistently stand are for meetings where I am going to be leading discussions, 1-on-1s with team members, and when I am trying to get something done in a shorter period of time than I think it will take. I flex between sitting and standing during longer meetings or when my Apple Watch buzzes to tell me to get up off my ass because I have been sitting for too long.

It is important to think when you want to be standing vs sitting so that you drive yourself to those behaviors. At the beginning it is not a natural shift so you have to be mindful about the action. These days I do it and don’t really notice that I am doing it. My team members used to comment when I would shift in the middle of a meeting but after a while they got used to it and it is just a normal thing now.

Helping with my standing

When I bought my desk I opted to purchase a standing mat at the same time. I did my research and was pleasantly surprised to find that my desk vendor also sold the Topo Comfort Mat by Ergodriven which was my top choice. This mat has different terrains that I use on a daily basis to stretch my legs & feet on.

I can say that half of the reason I switch to standing mode is to help stretch my legs & back. I struggle with back pain & as a runner my legs are always problematic. Getting up and using my Topo mat is something I look forward to because it helps relieve pain & get some of the lactic acid out of my muscles.

Add to all of this that with the wireless headset that I use I find that I can easily pace around my office to keep myself stimulated without needing to go back to the kitchen for an afternoon coffee.

The Chair

DISCLAIMER: I am super fortunate to have a wonderfully supportive & patient wife, Jilly, who puts up with my need to over engineer my world which inevitably means I spend way too much on gear. She is amazing and I appreciate her more than I can ever say.

I burn through home office desk chairs. The longest I have ever had a home office desk chair is about 2 years. Keep in mind for the past 5 years I was on the road roughly half the time and working from home half the time. This does not say good things about the chairs that I have owned.

Yes, I am a big guy. I stand 6’2″ and weigh between 250 & 270 depending upon the quantity of candy & carbs in the house during any given season. Luckily I have stayed on the lower end for the past 2 years thanks to being more active, but that is another blog post. I put stress on seating and I like comfy chairs. My one big requirement over the years is has been the ability to recline and set the angle of the recline at any point.

My last chair finally became no longer viable for me because Nate the Cat had ruined the seat with his claws. Just a side note, it is now his chair in my office as I don’t have the heart to take it away from him since he is getting older and less mobile. I told my awesome wife that I was going to finally invest “real money” in a replacement. I am pretty sure that she was only half listening when she said ok, but I ran away and ordered my new chair.

I got the Herman Miller Aeron. When you look up ergonomics in the dictionary I think that this chair is what comes up in the picture. I have had the good fortune of having one for my desk in the offices I have worked at in the past and missed it terribly. There is no comparison to it, but it is horribly overpriced. I am not putting a link to it here because I do not want to be the reason anyone else gets in trouble for spending this much on a desk chair. I justified my purchase because the Herman Miller warranty is 12 years and with how I burn through chairs, I will come out ahead… right?

Mouse ergonomic aid

I used to use a mouse pad with an wrist rest built in, but everything seems to have moved to fabric for the wrist rests nowadays and I severely dislike them. I found the Innovera Softskin Gel Wrist Rest to be just the right thing for me. So much so that I own 3 of them. One is on my desk and the other 2 are in the backpacks that I most frequently travel with to ensure I am never without one. I also keep extra mice in those bags as well because I am far more efficient with a mouse than a trackpad.

One thing about these wrist rests is that TSA is not quite sure what to make of them. After years of getting questioned by the same TSA agents at my local airport I started pulling it out of my bag and putting it with my cell phone and keys so that I don’t have to deal with the extra screening time, even though I am TSA-Pre. 1 out of 3 times the agent picks it up out of the bin, looks at it, gives it a squeeze, I tell them what it is and they let me go without a fuss. The other 2 times they don’t even bother picking it up. Huge time saver.

Wellness

This is a very personal topic area because it is all about what makes & keeps you well, not just physically but mentally also. Getting up and moving around is part of how I keep myself well.

Pre-COVID I was going to Orangetheory Fitness 3-5 days per week regardless of where I was in the world. I was feeling great, sore but great, and then the pandemic hit. My last class was March 16th, until the weekend before Labor Day but I haven’t been back again… yet.

I started running outside when COVID hit but I knew that wasn’t sustainable because I live in Texas and during the summer it is almost like running on the surface of the sun if you try to run outside. I invested my company health benefit in a NordicTrack 1950 treadmill and have put 250 miles on it between May and the first week in September.

I schedule my day around getting to run before family dinner, and it is the best thing for my wellness. I put in my AirPod Pros and just run. The rest of the world disappears for 45 minutes to an hour as I clear my head, get a feeling of accomplishment, and am generally a happier human when I sit down to dinner with Jilly & the Dudes after I run.

Finding that mental and physical outlet is critical and you won’t find it sitting at your desk. Make time for you, it doesn’t cost anything which is the only time I can say that in these recommendations 🙂

Wrapping it up

In this post I talked about ergonomics & wellness both through gear & self care. Remember that you are investing in yourself with all of this and you get out what you put in. That was cliché I know, but truth is truth.

On to the last post in this series!

In part 1 of this series I talked about the upcoming Microsoft Ignite conference and the Table Talk that I will be participating in. I gave my “bona fides” around the evolution of my remote working background. In this part I will to focus on the factors that have helped me find success over the years and achieve an acceptable balance of life & work in the same space.

When I started my new job with EY and knew that I was going to be home for the rest of 2020 I decided to make sure that my home office was as optimized as humanly possible and allow me to disconnect from work when I should. I have ordered and returned a number of different devices to get things how I have them today and what follows in this post are some of the things I have done & gotten that I have found to be useful.

Define your working space

Trying to work from the couch means you never get to relax on the couch. Subconsciously you are in your working space and will shift back to it way too easily.

17+ years ago when I was a bachelor I realized early on that a one bedroom home situation was not conducive to me ever leaving the work behind and just being a homebody… or a person who could bring dates back to my place because my roommate (work) was ever present. I quickly moved into a place that allowed for me to have a separate work space from living space and never looked back. Even when I was living in a one bedroom home situation I eventually had to define my working space until I was able to get into a multi-bedroom situation.

I understand that not everyone is able to simply move into the apartment next door with 2 bedrooms at a nominal upcharge on rent the way I was able to back then. I didn’t even have to hire movers. The landlords just let me have a week of overlap and I moved everything with one friend. I was really lucky.

If you are in a situation where you do not have the ability to expand your home space, clearly define your working space. It can be as simple as sitting in a different chair at the kitchen table than you normally do, but do something to help you distinguish between work time and home life.

I am fortunate to have a home office that has been clearly defined since we bought our house 5 years ago. The space is 100% mine and it is laid out for work. I used to play games on my home PC in the office, but over time I stopped doing that for the same reasons I listed above. It felt like I was at work rather than at play.

Optimizing your home workstation

In my office I have 1 computer. HAHAHA. Who am I kidding? There are anywhere from 4-6 machines in here depending upon what I am doing. If you asked my kids however, they would likely tell you that I only use 1 computer in my office.

Part of the problem I faced was over complication. As with most things, the KISS method works well for optimizing your home workstation.

A few years ago I had a 4 monitor rig (2 monitors stack mounted on pole stands) PLUS 3 horizontal monitors. This is what that looked like:

I have had multiple machines hooked up to this setup and I always had multiple keyboards and mice I had to switch between. When I was on the road 200 nights and only working in my home office periodically this was acceptable, but not anymore. It was WAY too complicated and overly distracting for a long term scenario.

After some trial & error I settled on the a cleaner, simpler multi-machine setup. Here is what my desk looks like today:

This set up has more horsepower than the old one, less light & heat coming from all of those monitors, and allows me to be WAY more focused and effective.

What comes next is a discussion about the the gear that I decided on for my home workstation. I don’t go into the PC hardware or anything, only the peripherals which is what makes the setup work best for me.

Keyboard & Mouse

I landed on the Logitech Ergo K860. Ergonomics is critical for someone who spends 10-16 hours a day in front of a computer. I always used the Microsoft Elite line in the past partly because I really enjoyed the simplicity of the extra function keys and the split keyboard layout. I found that Ergo K860 had the same style to it.

The mouse I chose is the MX Master 3 (this link is to the Logitech site as it appears that most vendors are out of stock on smile.amazon.com and I don’t want to recommend a used mouse). I’ve long been a Logitech mouse fan and my old MX Master had started to fail me a bit after 5+ years of faithful service.

Both of these devices leverage the Logitech Unifying receivers, which is key because it allows me to pair the receiver with multiple Logitech devices and then chose which machine I want to be connecting to at the touch of a button. They both have the ability to pair with up to 3 computers, both PC and Mac.

Sound

It took me a while to figure out that I was really missing out by only having a single pair of speakers that I would move the input between machines. I was using my personal machine less frequently so it felt like less of a big deal at first, but after 2 months I was fed up.

I invested in a set of Bose Companion 20s a couple of years back and LOVE them. They are great & I cannot say enough good things about them, so much so that I was willing to move the input between machines for months. However since I did not want to have to wear headphones all the time I decided that I needed more flexibility.

As a second set of speakers I invested in a set of Logitech Z200s for around $25. They work just fine for listening to Microsoft PGI calls and general conference calling purposes.

Listening to calls on speakers is nice, and easy when the house is empty. Not so easy when the house is not only my office but the Dudes school & living space. I need to make sure that I am not being distracted by the animals that live in my house (both cats and the Dudes qualify in this) and the general noises that go on when the house is occupied.

I have had a set of Bose on-ear noise cancelling headphones for years and a second set of Bose in-ear noise cancelling headphones that I highly recommend. They are older models but they still serve me well. My younger Dude took over my on-ear set when school started up and I recently started wearing hearing aids which means that my in-ear set require a shift. I also moved away from my Mac which means that my awesome AirPod Pros do not help with this situation as much.

That lead me to the new Sony MX4s. I am still tinkering with the Bluetooth settings to get the music audio to sound great, but for my work calls they have FANTASTIC sound quality and are comfortable while wearing my hearing aids.

Microphone & Camera input

The Blue Yeti USB mic is what I use for recording the podcast or doing streaming activities. I thought about upgrading and getting a Focusrite Scarlett mic preamp to attach one of my higher quality microphones to my machine, but the Yeti has served me well for the past few years.

I am a fan of the Logitech C920 web cam. At one point I had one setup on each of my PCs, until my older Dude needed it to have a better audio and video setup for doing Middle School Band remotely this year.

Once again I was left in a situation where I was shifting USB devices between machines. I decided to search for a solution and got recommended the UGREEN USB 3.0 Sharing Switch from my friend fellow Microsoft Ignite Speaker, Adam Saxton, since he does so much with his setup for Guy In A Cube.

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He & I are doing an Ask the Experts session together on Wednesday September 22nd at 7a Central Time… to be fair it is his session, I’m just helping him out. We are also doing an Ignite Social Hour that afternoon at 4:30p Central Time.

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The Sharing Switch was exactly what I needed. This device does a good job with a slow switch operation. By this I mean I use it to move from one PC to the other and don’t try to flip right back. I tried this once and the PCs both got confused and didn’t want to recognize the devices.

One life hack I have been recommending to people who have asked me for webcam recommendations in the past 6 months is to not use a webcam at all. Instead to use their cell phone as a webcam via Teams or Zoom. Teams handles this extremely well because it allows you to be on multiple devices under the same login.

It is not slanderous to say that web conferencing software is a resource hog on your PC. It is especially bad when you turn video on. Both of my PCs are high powered systems and the GPU spikes on both of them when I turn video on in Teams, and I always have video on. I find that it personalizes meetings and when people see that I am doing it, they do too. The internal monologue they are having sounds something like “If that funny looking guy can be on video I guess I can too”.

I spent less than $20 and got myself a mini tripod and a very solid smart phone mount that I use to do video calls on when I am doing resource intensive operations on my PC. Often I am in Teams screen sharing Power BI Desktop from my PC and have audio and video on my iPhone 11 Pro. This allows me to use my AirPod Pro headphones as well. I show up in the call only one time too.

I just sent this tripod & mount solution I linked to above to my awesome niece. That tripod came with a cell phone mount, but I prefer the one I linked to separately because it felt more sturdy while being very inexpensive.

Closing

In this post I shared some details about how I balance my life and separate my work. The key to everything above is finding the comfort zone for you and those around you.

The core message I am trying to convey is that if you can find a way to simplify your work space you can make more room for your life. That separating is key. When we work where we live it can be difficult to put the work away. If you can simplify and carve out that space, you will have an easier time walking away.

You don’t have to spend a ton to get there either, I am just a geek and like my toys. There are lots of low cost options that you can find to do everything I have talked about.

In the next part of this series I will share my experiences with ergonomics and then wrap up the last part of the series with a post about lighting & home automation. I’m going to save the best geeky stuff for last 😉