This reminds me of when I did something nasty to my back and could only lie down - instead of mounting my laptop I hooked it up to a projector I already had for films and pointed it at the ceiling. It required low light, but it was what I had available at the time and worked for the length of time it took for my back to get better.
However, I have to quibble with the "Healthy Hacking: DIY Supine Workstation" article linked to. That's a guaranteed way to make sure your muscles waste away, particularly if your aim is to "improve [the] ability to work for long hours." The human body is designed for movement, and static working is having a terrible impact, particularly on people who work on computers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz4bf
My back was a mess until I got a standing desk and started pilates. What I found interesting is that the standing desk made me move around quite a bit more - I end up doing lower-body yoga poses sometimes and I feel much better for it. I deliberately choose not to work long hours (I recognise I'm lucky in that respect, although I run my own company, so it's partially earned luck) but when I do need to, I can always bring my desk down and use a chair.
Author of the supine computing post here. I agree thoroughly that variety is best for health overall. In a different post I wrote a section about it: https://mgsloan.com/posts/deskless-ergo-wfh/#variety-is-key . I think it comes up elsewhere, but I should probably emphasize it in every post!
I currently have 3 mice (all different shapes), a trackpad, and a trackball hooked up to my workstation, with some on the left of my keyboard and some on the right. I switch between them depending on what currently hurts most. Seems to work better for my tendonitis than when I only used one device with my right hand. It's basically all the devices I went through, one at a time, trying to figure out which worked the best. They all do!
Changing it up is really important for certain. In fact ergonomic advice for dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome is going to contradict advice for dealing with ulnar tunnel syndrome.
Supine posture isn't really all that static if you're awake and on a surface at least as hard as tatami - you can shift around on the floor much more than in a chair, especially if the monitor can adjust a bit with you. Add a pillow anywhere and your entire force distribution changes. I would be a little more suspicious of the hammock idea, or soft beds. If you're sinking into it, it's obviously immobilizing.
Floor desking is my go-to for maximum variability though. It just needs "enough" monitor height/size that you don't hunch over to peer at the text. The rest happens naturally.
In both cases I use only a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo now. When I started out doing this I quickly realized it was the peripherals that were the problem.
I see what you mean in terms of movement, but lying down is also not a natural position for a human body except for the duration of sleep. I mean, you might be able to avoid bed sores, but you're not using your core muscles in the way that the body is evolved for and your joints aren't being used in a way that will keep them in tune. It's a bit like astronauts losing a lot of general body tone and having to go through quite a bit of conditioning when they return to earth.
Some notes from someone who has experimented with this for years - with zero gravity chairs, beds, floors...
- having your hands elevated above chest height sucks after a few minutes. The Altwork and Ergoquest workstations suck for that reason, and you _need_ a split keyboard if you don't want numb fingers.
- not moving sucks. I think I've hurt my neck and back (and throat) more by doing this than I'd like to admit
- for short periods of time, and when you can _actually_ relax (side projects etc.), working in this way is divine.
YMMV.
Side note - I discovered OP Andy Matuschak around 3 hours ago while pimping my Obsidian config, and have been the biggest fan of @msgsloan's vim Todoist plugin for years.
Very interesting about hands elevated above chest height. I also thoroughly agree about using a variety of postures. I think for a lot of folks supine / reclined might be too relaxing for work. I find it to work decently for an hour or two before feeling lazy
Ideally is an all angle all positions strong fixating /holding easy to adjust levitating desk .
this back position if you don't move for more than half a day could be very painful , i guess is similar with what an astronaut feels in space
I tried a few things at the start of the local lockdown, and soon found that laying flat on my back was a bit impractical (this guy seems to have found some solutions which I consider too much hassle like the suspended laptop). Also I find that laying flat on my back puts pressure on my lower back, perhaps due to tight abductor muscles or something.
What I found was that with a couple of pillows on my couch, I could elevate my upper body in a gentle curve which resulted in my eyes being almost level but with no stress on neck or back (compare this to the guy in the article elevating just his head, which is too acute an angle and stresses the neck). At that point I just moved my monitor to various positions and elevations in my sightline until it seemed right. I had my mouse on a coffee table so that my arm was not elevated, and my keyboard on my lap (this part required touch-typing, otherwise I would have to keep lifting my head).
Once I found the sweet spot where i was relaxed but supported ( it wasn't that hard), I could pretty much work indefinitely. At that point the issue was no longer stress on any body parts, but the potential overall fitness degradation of lying down all day, which could theoretically be solved with regular breaks for getting up and moving around, but I was probably a bit lazy with that.
The best I managed was with a proper sleeping hammock (not one with the evil spreader bars like he has here), and a bunch of blankets curled up into long 'snakes' that I could wrap around my body where necessary. I had an armature with a monitor over the hammock, although a laptop propped up with pillows could probably be done as well.
It was actually a really comfortable setup, which is not what these experiments usually result in for me, but it did take up a ton of space (indoor hammock stands are pretty huge). My favorite bit part is that a sleeping hammock is a pretty nice and dynamic thing to lay in. You can fidget and change positions every few minutes and it will usually reconfigure itself into a somewhat reasonable position. Plus, pop a VR headset on and you have a pretty good spaceship.
Of course the diagonal orientation is important, but I guess that's probably the first advice you found when trying it out, so I won't repeat it. So, yeah, they aren't necessarily for everyone.
Have you tried the simple solution of putting an ice pack on your back? Also, stop driving in your car with your wallet in your back pocket. Also, avoid hot tub as this will make it worse. Don't sit for long periods. Get up and walk. You look young and healthy and these are the solutions I had when I was younger when I had back pain.
I have chronic back pain due to a disease which went undiagnosed for most of my life.
I understand that this comment is made in good faith and with the best of intents, but I loathe getting this kind of advice. I'm not trying to be a dick, I just want to let you know that this advice is extremely frustrating for a lot of people suffering from back pain. ESPECIALLY "you look young and healthy"...Yea thanks, I'll probably still look young when I'm in a wheelchair.
PS If your back hurts and your doctor doesn't seem to believe you or care, get a new doctor.
Thank you! I appreciate your tips. Yes, I move around a lot, I practice acrobatics at least a few times a week :) I think the original injury may have something to do with doing back bends improperly years ago, or snowboarding.
I recently went to one session with a PT to diagnose it, since it's returned again this year. It's probably chronically strained quadratus lumborum or some other muscle involved in spinal extension. Avoiding upright sitting as much as possible definitely helps. I've recently moved closer to things so that I can bicycle to most things instead of driving, and I think that's helped too.
The PT thinks the solution is to train my movement patterns to use more core / glute stabilization rather than dumping the responsibility on the back muscles. There are various exercises to help train those patterns and strengthen then muscles involved.
LOL! That hammock setup is impressive! I've never owned a laptop that can get bright enough for me to comfortably see the screen outside though :(
Am I the only one here who lays around on their bed in various positions while typing on my laptop?
I switch from laying on my back/front/side every 15 minutes or so, to prevent my body from getting to kinked up. I also practice Ashtanga every morning before I start work.
Sometimes I prop it up on my bent legs when laying down with no pillow, sometimes I prop my head up with a few pillows and leave the laptop on my flat legs.
Been doing this for years now and I absolutely love it.
Doesn't seem to bother my sleep either. I know when I'm done work for the day (usually after a few hours of programming), put the laptop away, and get on with my day.
IIRC, the lowest-back-muscle-tension recline angle isn't actually 180° (laying completely flat) but actually 135° (legs forward, back and neck against a wedge. Or probably—in the ancestral environment—against the base of a tree.)
Anyone got a good ergonomic setup for achieving 135° recline, no-neck-flexion computing? (Besides buying that one ridiculous $5000 chair, I mean.)
After pulling my back a while ago, I did this with a VR headset. It worked well and was about the only way I could look at a screen. I mainly used the built in browser in the Oculus Quest, but you could do remote desktop with mouse and keyboard instead. I had a several foot virtual screen projected a few feet above my head. I would never want to do this if I didn't have an acute injury since laying in bed all day sounds like a sure path to muscle weakness.
It's too comfortable while laying down, I usually fell into sleep when I was laying down on my bed to take a rest. I guess this could also happen with such setup.
I think it's better to find a comfortable chair instead, unless you don't have choice but laying down. It's important to keep the laying down pose dedicated to sleeping/resting, do some exercise at other time and this could boost your productivity.
I think there's quite a bit of variety in people's alertness in reclined / supine postures. Personally I have trouble sleeping unless conditions are really good for it. This sucks, but I think related to this trait is that it takes quite a while for me to feel sleepy as a result of supine / reclined postures.
When I spent a lot of time laying in bed using a laptop, my typical position was to put my knees up and open the computer at an obtuse angle on my stomach. The only problem I’ve had with this was one time when I shifted positions and my MacBook fell forward, striking the bridge of my nose with the edge of the lid. We all know how sharp the edges are on MBPs, right? It left a 1 cm scar on my nose.
Yes, if you look carefully you can see where it was, 9 years later. My skin heals strangely, perhaps. I was just looking at a dark spot from a small burn I got cooking last summer and wondering if that's normal.
With how severe the corner is on the MacBook, I’d compare the impact to being whacked with the back of a 4 lb butter knife.
Awesome article, I'd turn into a human from WALL-E after a few months of it. How do you avoid water outside? Between neighborhood kids playing with squirt guns in the pool next door and the sweat from outdoor temperatures it seems hazardous. Another problem I had was screen brightness, the sun always found a way to make the screen unreadable or get in my eyes.
For a while I had a misting setup during the summer, at my deck desk. I didn't have any trouble with electronics. These days I'm in Colorado which tends to be relatively dry.
Cram the keyboard end of a laptop between the headboard of a bed and the wall, rotate the display 180º in the OS settings, and plug in an external keyboard and mouse. Lie down in bed and compute.
Works okay except that strain is then offloaded either to your wrists if you have a regular keyboard (not like the OP has), or legs if you arch them underneath the keyboard.
I have and it worked well enough. Last time I pulled my back I worked a day in VR and spent a day watching shows and playing xbox before I could stand again. I find that immobilization is the best way to let muscle pulls heal so my method is to just stay flat on my back for a day or two. Before I had the headset I stared at the ceiling for 2 days.
I've struggled to find split keyboards that work for laying down. Most split keyboards have a cord that runs between the split even if they're advertised as bluetooth.
It is weird to me that somebody could be so enthusiastic about finding different ways to lay on things, but could have a hammock with a spreader bar. Sleeping hammocks are generally known to be much better, right?
However, I have to quibble with the "Healthy Hacking: DIY Supine Workstation" article linked to. That's a guaranteed way to make sure your muscles waste away, particularly if your aim is to "improve [the] ability to work for long hours." The human body is designed for movement, and static working is having a terrible impact, particularly on people who work on computers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz4bf
My back was a mess until I got a standing desk and started pilates. What I found interesting is that the standing desk made me move around quite a bit more - I end up doing lower-body yoga poses sometimes and I feel much better for it. I deliberately choose not to work long hours (I recognise I'm lucky in that respect, although I run my own company, so it's partially earned luck) but when I do need to, I can always bring my desk down and use a chair.