Having a home office, or office, that works for you and not against you, will mean that at the end of your day, you won’t be stressed out, overly tired, or aching. Why waste time rubbing your sore back and neck? A poorly designed office space can really hinder your productive working time. A few tips below may help you to optimize your work time, and take full of advantage of it.

• Don’t stick to the same routine every day. Working in different areas — reaching here rather than there; setting up a few new techniques to help your work go smoother; will enable you to rest up your body and it will give you a fresher mind as well.

• If you’re in the market for a new office desk, then look for the kind with an adjustable keyboard and tray for your mouse. You can adjust it to suit you, so that your risk of getting carpal tunnel syndrome will be much reduced. The latter is an often painful condition and it’s sometimes irreversible. Make sure that the tray is large enough to hold your keyboard and mouse.

• Stretch your back out and change the way you’re sitting every half-hour or so. Try and get adjustable furniture so that you can move your chair up and down, and perhaps change the height of different things on your desk. This gives different muscle groups in your body a bit of a change, while others do the work.

• If you are a proper and classically-trained typist, then don’t tilt your keyboard towards you. If you hunt and peck while typing, then you can. If you are a regular typist, try and tilt the bottom of your keyboard so that it’s in a horizontal position.

• When you’re typing, hold your wrists in a straight position if you can. If they are bent, then adjust your keyboard angle or chair height. Elbows should not be bent at more than a 90° angle, or pressure is put on your blood vessels. You could develop sore shoulders, wrists, and arms.

• If your are larger than average person, then consider purchasing an ergonomic keyboard which is split in the middle. Each half is angled away from the other, and your arms as well as your elbows will have a better chance at working properly.

• Use your shortcut keys when you can, rather than the mouse all the time. Study a few facts on your computer, and use Control + S to save your work, and Control + P to print it. If you’re a big keyboard user, then learning more of these shortcut key actions will really help you out.

• If you reduce the glare from your monitor, you’ll save a lot of squinting and tension around your eye area. An added bonus is that you won’t get so many wrinkles! You can purchase these screens, which just clip onto your monitor, at most office supply stores. You can also get prescription eyeglasses with an antiglare finish applied.

If you are super serious about becoming ergonomically more viable, then consider hiring an occupational or a physical therapist to come in and inspect your work space.  They should be able to make recommendations to improve the ergonomics in your area.  This can be rather expensive, though.  You have to ask yourself the question:  “How much is my comfort worth?”

Making even a few of the above inexpensive changes in your office, will go a long way towards helping you to streamline your work day, as well as making it far more comfortable.