When you sit at your desk for prolonged hours during the day it is common to feel discomfort.  While there are many solutions to help ease the discomfort, the easiest solutions may be adjusting your immediate workspace. For you to perform your work at your optimal level here are tips for staying comfortable at your desk.

• Analyze your discomfort: Your body will be the number one representative of where the problem lies.  If your back hurts, look at the height of your chair, and the position.  Determine if your chair can be adjusted for your height, arm length, etc… If your wrists hurt look at your arm position when you type. Consider opting for arm/wrist supports to place at your mouse or adjacent to your keyboard. Many companies have a safety employee or resources to help you assess your current workstation and have ergonomic solutions to help. For ergonomic supplies try Kelly Computer Supplies which carry many options to suit your needs.

• Adjust your lighting:  Eye fatigue is a common work related discomfort caused by inadequate, harsh lighting, or glare. Determine which kind of lighting is necessary for your space. Overhead or ambient lighting is needed for general office work. Task lighting, such as a desk lamp will help with close-up tasks and can vary in brightness for your specific needs. If you’re experiencing glare onto your computer screen assess where the nuisance glare is coming from. Consider installing an anti-glare screen over your monitor, or tilting your screen away from the glare source.

• Take frequent breaks: To prevent fatigue take frequent breaks and leave your desk and/or get fresh air. We often think if we stay at our desk longer we will get more accomplished.  The contrary is true.  You actually become fatigued quicker and start to be less productive. If you’re fortunate to have a desk near a window, let fresh air in periodically.  If you’re slammed on a deadline, walk around your immediate area for a change of scenery!

• Use modern devices: For those that have the ability to upgrade their work areas, consider buying an ergonomic telephone, and computer stands to replace the old ones. Workspaces that still have 15 year old chairs, and desks are unlikely to have amenities that are healthy for good office posture and comfort. Generally, newer workspace devices will have better ergonomic form and in turn will have you feel more comfortable.

Staying comfortable at your work desk can be achieved with adjustments to your workspace. Once you find the culprit of your discomfort, these problem solving tips can help you enjoy work again.

Ever wonder why you can fit 100 tasks into a Saturday, but can only manage to do 5 on a work day? Most likely you are able to be productive when its tasks that are important to you. At the office, distractions, phone calls and boredom get you off track and thus lead to being unproductive. Here are 10 ways to help you be more productive and leave the office feeling good about your daily accomplishments.

1.) Clean your desk: If you can’t find anything on your desk, you will spend more time searching for your work than doing it. Spend a few hours and clean it up, you’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel.

2.) Simplify your email inbox: Checking your inbox and sorting through the junk can easily take up thirty to sixty minutes of your day. Most all email clients give you the option to create filters / alerts to pro-actively sort your inbound messages. Create filters / alerts for messages from certain individuals or for certain types of messages of a lower priority (newsletters, so you can focus on messages from customers, vendors or superiors.

3.) Stay on a schedule: Although unplanned office duties arise, for the most part you need to create a schedule on a calendar and stick to it. Consider syncing your work computer to your smart phone to keep the same schedule, alerts and appointments all at hand. Talk to your boss about getting a time tracking program to help you stay focused through out the day. Check out GetHarvest.com for a free 30-day trial.

4.) Arrive at work earlier: Most people are able to be more productive when they don’t have coworkers and other office distractions disturbing them. If you get to work 1 hour earlier, you can use this time for planning, sorting, cleaning, so when your coworkers arrive, you can hit the ground running.

5.) Keep meetings to a minimum: If you scheduled a staff meeting, stick to an allotted amount of time and respect your attendees’ time as well. Determine if some meetings can be handled with a webinar or by phone instead of at a remote location that involves everyone driving and taking up more time.

6.) Ask for help: If you have a big deadline, or feel overwhelmed ask for assistance. Your boss or coworkers may be able to divide/share in the workload to ensure it meets the deadline.

7.) Schedule short breaks: Throughout your day, get up from your desk and walk around and get fresh air. Your brain and body work better when they are revived periodically.

8.) Assess yourself: Everyone works differently. If you know you’re most productive first thing in the morning – then handle your most difficult assignments at that time. You will be more efficient when you work on your own terms.

9.) Set personal goals: Keep yourself motivated by setting your own goals. “If I finish this task, I can go to lunch earlier and avoid the lunch rush” for example.

10.) Be your own cheerleader: Leave your workday each day congratulating yourself on what you accomplished. For items you didn’t finish, come up with a new plan tomorrow.

You can leave your job happier and arrive at the job ready to work when you develop a system for productivity. Try these 10 tips and see how much work you get done during the week now! Have any other tips? Be sure to share your comments below.

It’s hard to be stuck in the office during the summer months when the weather is so beautiful outside. So why not add some fun to your office? We’ve put together some sarcastic signs to give you a chuckle and distract you from thinking about all of the lucky ones relaxing on the beach while you ferociously type away at your computer. (Don’t worry – they’re all safe for work!)

Hope these signs gave you a little laugh. If you have any to share, please post a link in the comments!

Just about every company uses traditional communication methods like a telephone to facilitate communication with customers and suppliers, but do you realize that by using the Internet you can enhance your business communication? The Internet allows a company to take their communication to the next level, for a surprisingly affordable price. Saving money while obtaining advanced features is a win-win situation for even the smallest of companies.

There are Internet-based communication technologies that give a modern twist to traditional communication methods, and technologies that allow you to communicate in ways once accessible to only the largest of corporations with huge IT budgets. Fortunately, today the Internet allows any sized business to take advantage of the latest communication technologies without having to spend a bundle. Three such technologies are as follows:

1. Virtual Phone Services – A virtual phone service uses the Internet to facilitate voice communication. Also known as VOIP (voice over Internet protocol), a virtual phone service comes in two flavors – the full small business phone system and the add on service – both using your existing high-speed Internet connection.

A full virtual phone system includes everything you need to have a multi-extension office phone system, without needing to pay for traditional copper wire service. You just plug your Internet enabled phone handsets into your existing office Internet network and you get a fully configurable phone system that uses the service provider’s computer servers, eliminating the need for your company to invest in expensive hardware. You have full control over inbound call routing and other advanced features once available to only Fortune 500 companies.

An add on virtual phone solution uses your existing landlines and cell phones, but adds the same advanced features of a full virtual office phone system. You are assigned a toll-free or local phone number that becomes your main business number and you have a virtual auto attendant that routes calls to the appropriate existing phone line. You also have full control over call routing, and can quickly update how calls are routed. This means that you can have inbound calls routed to your cell phone, your home phone, or any working phone line anywhere in the world, thus allowing you to always be available to take calls, no matter where you happen to be.

Most virtual phone services come with a standard feature set, including complete voice mail service for each extension/phone line, call forwarding capability, call logs, and much more.

2. Online Fax Services – Despite the fact that faxing has been around for a long time, many businesses still rely on it as a primary means of communication. For many reasons, there are industries that are unable, or refuse, to use email to replace faxing, which means that there is still a business need to have faxing capability.

By using an affordable online fax service, you can save a great deal of money versus using a traditional fax machine, while having the features a fax machine is typically unable to provide. An online fax service uses your existing computer and Internet connection to send and receive faxes. You don’t need to pay money every month to the phone company for a dedicated fax line, and you can say goodbye to buying toner cartridges for that ugly fax machine you have stashed in the corner.

Online faxing is easy to use. If you can compose an email, or create a word processing document, you can fax online. With the ability to receive inbound faxes in your email inbox, you can literally receive faxes anywhere in the world. It also allows  secure access to an online fax account that lets you compose, view and manage your faxes with ease, making faxing online a simple process.

3. Web Conferencing – Web conferencing, also known as online meetings, enables you to meet over the Internet with customers and coworkers, reducing the need for business travel. Imagine being able to meet online from the comforts of your desk, without having to spend days traveling across the country, or world.

There are web conferencing solutions that range from just being able to talk over the Internet, to solutions where the meeting organizer shares their computer desktop to give a presentation, to a full video conferencing solution where you not only can hear those you are meeting with, but you can also see them. Depending on your business needs, there is a web conferencing solution to let you take your meetings online and significantly reduce overhead.

The Internet allows you to meet with someone at a remote location without ever needing to leave your office, while giving you the level of personal interaction that you desire. An online meeting may never be able to replace all face-to-face meetings, but for many situations, the ability to meet online can save you a great deal of time and money.

Give Internet-Based Communication a Try

Most leading providers of the three Internet-based communication technologies mentioned above allow you to try their services for free, generally for a 30-day period. This allows you to see for yourself how the Internet can help you take your business communication to the next level, without committing to anything until you are convinced of its usefulness.

These online business services can save your company money while giving you access to technology that not that long ago was out of reach for all but the largest corporations. If your company communicates via the telephone, uses a fax machine, or travels to hold business meetings, then you should harness technology to give your business a competitive advantage.

About the Author:

This guest post was written by Business Service Reviews, which is a website that features product and business service reviews that help business owners make use of technology to start and run an efficient operation.