health :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Bad Patient Epidemic Emergency Meeting

A few weeks from now we will all be making resolutions for 2011, and many of us will include something about health and fitness.

It’s always a good idea to look after our health. When we work for ourselves there is extra reason to stay healthy.

One of my resolutions for 2011 will be to be a Bad Patient.

Which is what I was “accused” of by a local medico when I visited the local health centre a while ago.

I can’t recall what the particular medical reason was, obviously nothing drastic enough to remember: I may have been getting a script as backup for a trip. But as the doctor I had seen previously wasn’t available I found myself being attended by another doctor, the owner of the practice.

As I entered, he looked up from his records and said “You’ve been a bad patient!” For a moment I was nonplussed, then saw the hint of a smile. “You haven’t been coming to see us.” “That’s because I’ve been well,” I said, somewhat superfluously.

That hasn’t always been the case. But these days being well and fit is my normal state.

We solo bizoids, especially, need to keep healthy

And as well as being a much more pleasant way of living and working than having to cope with illness, as many people do, it’s important to be healthy – crucial in fact – if you work for yourself.

In 2006 I reflected here on the topic with my post If You Own a Small Business You’d Better be Healthy. On commenter observed at the time that I was probably referring to working solo, which was a fair observation, although I can think of a number of small businesses that could seriously lose momentum, or even go under, if the owner took sick for any length of time.

And as I indicated in that earlier post, having income maintenance insurance did not help me when I really needed it as the insurance company basically weaselled out of paying, with a spurious argument that even embarrassed my insurance agent. Certainly that is no argument against having insurance (just do your best to establish that the insurance company will behave ethically when and if a situation arises).

But I doubt that anyone sensible, including the ironic doctor of my story above, would argue that prevention – i.e. keeping healthy – is better than cure!

I count it a great blessing that I am very healthy these days and it sure is more fun to work healthy than the alternative in the past, when I have had to struggle sometimes, when not well, to keep the business afloat.

So I am really focused on being a Bad Patient in 2011.

And what if it was catching?

Image credit: “Doctors at the General Assembly” by Waldo Jaquith – Creative Commons license

Some time ago I made a purchase of a very simple piece of office equipment, a notebook computer stand from the appropriately named Standit company. It’s one of the best office equipment purchases I’ve ever made and I felt I should share this information with my fellow home based professionals, with this unsolicited review.

The stand would of course work also in a regular office environment, where as Gartner’s Robin Simpson observed at a conference last week, employees are increasingly going to be bringing their own notebook computers to work.

Now anyone who was either what used to be called a keyboard operator or a manager back in the days of the Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) epidemics knows about ergonomics and the importance of good posture and other good practices in using computers.

And all of us who spend a lot of time at computers know, don’t we, that we should really take care of our posture, get up regularly and stretch, and do all those good things that will prevent us from seizing up?

Take for example this fairly typical, in my experience, set of rules from ergonomic experts:

Maintain proper posture, paying careful attention to positioning of head, neck/spine, arms/wrists, hips/thighs and feet. Basically, ensure the small of your back is supported, your shoulders relaxed (not slumped, not elevated), and that there is no pressure under your thighs.

And that’s just the first of ten bullet points on the subject.

But knowledge does not always translate into action and I confess that, as effectively my own supervisor over my years working from home I have been less than careful about posture, standing up and stretching and all those good things I should do.

The folly of my negligence was brought home to me after a particularly painful session the other week with the masseur, who is trying to unkink my shoulders from the combined effects of rugby football in my youth, a car accident some years ago and more years than I care to recall sitting at a computer. The masseur observed matter-of-factly that computers are very bad for shoulders.

Not rugby, not car accidents. Computers!

I certainly didn’t want to suffer more pain at the masseur’s hands than was absolutely necessary. But recently I had replaced my desktop machine with a notebook and had been told I was hunching over the keyboard even more than previously.

It was clearly time to take some action.

But the actual trigger for my taking action was my discomfort with the way the notebook was heating up and leaving the desk beneath hot to the touch. And a crack had developed in the top of my lovely timber desk. I was not happy.

I did quite a bit of online searching and checked out the local computer supply shops to see what was available in the way of stands for notebooks. Because of the heating problem, I was drawn to ones which had built-in fans. As it turned out, once I found the basic Standit product I could not see a need for the fan.

Indeed, once the notebook was set up on the Standit stand, the heat problem disappeared. Right now, although the machine has been on continuously for the past four hours or so, it is as cool to the touch as if it were not running.

And because I now have to sit up straight and keep my head up in order to read the screen, using the new stand has had a very positive effect on my posture. The bottom of the screen is now some 4″ (25cm) higher than the bottom of a normal desktop screen would be. And I certainly prefer getting back to using a regular desktop type keyboard rather than the very unergonomic, built-in notebook keyboard.

The stand is really simple to set up. I got a bit confused because there were two optional attachments for the setup, but there were actually instructions in the package which explained the options.

The only thing you need to check before ordering is the thickness of the base of your notebook, so that you know whether to order the stand for a 30mm thickness or less or a 36mm thickness or less, which apparently takes care of the range.

Cost was very reasonable. The stand cost AU$37.95 plus shipping $5.50 to the door and I bought a USB keyboard for $23, so all up $66.45, say around US$54. Great value.

After-sales service was good. When I was trying to figure out the setup and not wanting to break anything by forcing it, I left a phone message with the company. Someone rang me back, keen to help solve the problem, which by then I had actually solved.

Standit also have a special IBM ThinkPad mini-dock and another product, with a 4-point USB hub, two cooling fans and more adjustability, the latter at the competitive price of AU$46 (US$37 today). But I don’t feel deprived. The simple Standit stand was just what I needed. And super portable for extended travel, although a travelling (foldable) keyboard would then be needed.

The Standit home office is in Melbourne, Australia, but apparently they ship extensively around the world.

The stand doesn’t do away with the need for me to sit up straight. It means I don’t have to remind myself to sit up.