SoC #48: Incorporating Conscious Movement Into Your Day

Read Time: 5 minutes

I'm Lisa - welcome to this week's edition of Stream of Consciousness - the newsletter for product leaders who want to build products and their careers more consciously, in ways that are inclusive, holistic, ethical, accessible, and sustainable.

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With everything we are dealing with these days, both in our lives and in the world, it can be easy to lose sight of something that matters most - how we feel.

The demands of our roles as product managers frequently mean that we are not only on computers for a lot of the day, but we're also constantly context-switching and spending a higher-than-average percentage of time on video calls.

If you're working from home in your current product role, or are in the middle of transition and actively looking for work, I am willing to bet that you are spending at least 7-8 hours of your day glued to a screen.

This is especially accentuated if you're working from home and don't have a commute, aren't meeting in person, or walking to get lunch or coffee in the middle of your work day.

But as you go about your day-to-day to-do lists, do you ever stop to think, "How is using a computer for so much of my day actually impacting me physiologically and mentally?"

Before I became a product manager, I was a biomechanics researcher, so I have a natural inclination to be overly aware of body positioning and mechanics. I also have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which, in the context of movement, basically means my tissues are a lot more lax than they should be and that I need to rely on my muscles actively more than on passive structures to hold myself in certain positions during a day. I like to think of this as having a built-in internal warning system that goes off way in advance of a typical person's to let me know I need to change positions.

In saying this, there are three things I now know for sure:

1. As humans we are not designed to work in a fixed position all day. We are designed to move, through different positions, in different ranges of motion, with different loads in order to feel good, be healthy, and for our biological systems to function optimally (i.e. lymphatic system, circulatory system, digestive system, etc.).

2. Ergonomics extends far beyond keeping your body in as close to "neutral" positions as possible during a day. It also incorporates how many different positions we are in during a day, how much we are asking our tissues to adapt to these positions to support us, and what our eyes are doing through all of this.

3. We are not passive victims. There are things we can actively do and implement in our lives and environments immediately to help us incorporate more movement during our days. Just because our culture has dictated much of what we call "normal" in terms of how we work (i.e. sitting in a chair at a desk all day), that doesn't mean we have to work in this fashion - there are alternatives.

Here are a few things to think about implementing in your working life and environment right now to encourage more movement and being in different positions while you get sh*t done.

Note: This post has been inspired by Bam, a movement coach who runs Primal Movement who I have been following for a while - he's great! Check out his video on rethinking the modern living room and work place here:

1. Incorporate Using Objects Of Varying Heights

Most people who work from home have found value in traditional ergonomic aids like a chair with good lumbar support and maybe a standing desk. But sitting with support for prolonged periods, or standing for long periods in stationary postures are actually not ideal. Incorporating things like a low table that you can set your laptop on while working from the floor in different positions, a small stool you can sit on in a passive squat position, a cushion you can use to work from your tummy in a prone position - these are all tools we can use to help facilitate us being in different positions during a day.

2. Think of Incremental Movement vs. Stationary Positions

More and more people I know have been purchasing treadmill desks. I don't personally have one and not everyone can afford one or has the space in their home office, but a few things that have helped me significantly are:

• Taking breaks to walk outside during the day

• Doing some of my work from a stationary bike (i.e. Biking while using my phone to respond to Slack messages, setting my laptop up on the handlebars and watching a webinar or meeting that I don't need to actively participate in)

• Changing positions frequently (i.e. Moving from my desk to the floor, sitting to standing to kneeling)

• Taking dance and stretching breaks - I got a bunch of cheap foam interlocking flooring from Walmart that lets me work in a place where it's super easy to do this

3. Explore How You Feel

Working from the ground can be very empowering and also eye-opening as it lets us access different hip positions, spinal loading dynamics, knee positions, and more that we typically don't come close to accessing if we are sitting at a desk, in a car, or on a sofa for 90% of our waking hours. If experimenting with different floor positions feels uncomfortable at first, that's normal and totally okay - you can use assistive tools like yoga blocks (you can get these at the dollar store now) to prop yourself up so your ranges of motion don't need to be as extreme. You can think of being in different postures during your day as "greasing the groove" - the more you slowly introduce your body to new postures, the more your connective tissues will adapt so that over time it will feel more comfortable. And when it feels uncomfortable? Switch it up!

Standing for a long time and your lower back hurts? Instead of plopping down on your couch, try doing 2 minutes of basic mobility to get things moving again like cat-cows, pelvic tilts, and thoracic CARs.

4. Don't Forget About Your Eyes!

While technology has exponentially increased how productive we can be and expanded what falls within the realm of possibility for the human race, it has also come at a huge cost - not only are our bodies not being moved as they truly need to be - also, our eyes are bearing the brunt of our screen use and our visual systems are being damaged in the process.

In addition to problems that are more widely known like generalized eye strain and the fact that looking at a screen means we blink less and our eyes are less lubricated than they should be, there are less commonly talked about impacts that computers have on our visual systems.

Our eyes were built to work together binocularly to focus on focal points at different distances. How flexible the lens within each eyeball is contributes to this. Similar to a muscle, your lens changes shape to bring things into focus and needs to be worked throughout its range to maintain its function.

If we are spending high percentages of time focusing on objects at the same distance (i.e. at a computer screen), it can cause problems in how quickly our lenses can change shape when attempting to focus on objects that are either closer or farther away.

Researchers have also found that the number of hours spent in front of a screen directly correlates to the likelihood of developing convergence insufficiency, a condition in which your eyes are unable to work properly together when looking at objects up close and can cause headaches, blurred or double vision, poor hand-eye coordination, motion sickness and dizziness, and a plethora of other symptoms that aren't fun.

Some things I have found helpful in this vein are:

• Using a screen reader to read email content or important articles and briefs aloud to avoid having to look at a screen for these activities

• Working at different distances from my screens (I want to experiment with casting meetings more so I can situate myself farther from the screen)

• Using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to provide more affordance to change up the distance between you and your screen

• Using a pomodoro timer to prompt "gaze breaks" (I close my eyes, go outside, or consciously focus on objects at different distances, i.e. throwing a tennis ball against a wall and tracking it with my eyes)

There is A LOT to unpack here and I feel as though this article just scratches the surface - I'd love to hear your thoughts. What do you do to incorporate more movement into your work life?

Also - I'm considering creating a mini-course around designing your workspace more consciously - if this is something you're interested in, let me know!

Soulwork 💜

• Stay Close to These Kinds of People by @BlauCalifornia (IMHO - both at work and in your personal life)

Cool Product Alert 🚨

If you're not already following Clo S who runs This Too Shall Grow, I highly recommend subscribing to her newsletter, Digital Wellness, that focuses on helping readers build healthier digital habits. She also just launched a really cool digital workbook designed to help you reclaim your time, attention, and wellbeing from your devices that you can check out here:

It covers everything from evaluating your digital habits and how tech makes you feel to updating your default settings to improving your security and protecting your data and much, much more.

Thanks for Reading!

Have a great week!

-Lisa ✨

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