You’re not sitting correctly at your home office
Meanwhile, some companies are paying for ergonomic home office furniture. Some are not.
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It’s time to have a conversation about ergonomics.
Sounds thrilling, right? Look at it this way. I could pretend to explain to you why tech stocks are yo-yo-ing. Or I could spend a moment trying to convince you to take your work-from-home setup seriously.
If you’re like me, you were too busy last March to be bothered with ergonomic happiness. Six months later, it’s time to focus on our hurting necks, wrists, forearms, shoulders, backs, eyesight, and so on. I’m shifting to an external keyboard, propping up my laptop screen on some books, and getting a proper monitor. This handy piece from The New York Times has great tips, including these pearls of wisdom about how to sit: “hips slightly higher than the knees, arms relaxed at your side, neck relaxed and straight, forearms parallel to the ground, feet resting on the floor.”
There’s a lot you can do without new equipment. But in some cases, you’ll need some new stuff. GitLab, the all-remote company that makes tools for software developers, encourages its employees to buy whatever they need to get comfortable, within reason. It also has published its suggestions for how to improve your home setup.
If your company is too stingy to invest in your comfort, you might consider investing in yourself—or finding another job.
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The Fortune Global Forum convenes each year or so in important business centers around the world. (My passport stamps include New Delhi, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Toronto, and Paris.) This year it convenes online, Oct. 26-27, with a time-zone-sensitive schedule to accommodate participants from Asia and Europe.
Freed from the commitment of travel, we’ve already signed up an impressive group of CEOs including Marriott’s Arne Sorenson, Beth Ford of Land O’Lakes, Brian Cornell of Target, Deanna Mulligan of Guadian Life, and GE’s Larry Culp.
Fortune events are by invitation only; please email me if you’d like to be considered.
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SOME CULTURE: I can’t recommend strongly enough the Spotify podcast Wind of Change, the eight-episode exploration by journalist Patrick Radden-Keefe of whether the CIA wrote a famous rock ballad. I spent multiple blissful walks listening to it this summer … I finally watched the three-part docuseries Inside Bill’s Brain, the all-access and slightly puffy deep dive on Netflix into Bill Gates by Davis Guggenheim. Despite all the good cheer, it is really insightful, including comments from Melinda Gates on being married to such a difficult guy and Bill Gates’ regrets about not having said a proper goodbye to his onetime best friend Paul Allen … Fitzgerald nerds and residents of Westport, Conn., need to watch the low-production-value but charming documentary Gatsby in Connecticut on Amazon Prime Video.
Adam Lashinsky
JOIN US: The pandemic has rewritten business. Fortune is hosting a virtual discussion with experts across industries (Intel, Slack, Citi, Universal Pictures) to explore how companies can, through transformative tech such as A.I., become more resilient in a time of intense change. Register here for free to join on September 16 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT.
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.