Conquer your cubicle

Abs-sculpting furniture. A noise generator that blocks out nasal-voiced Janice in accounting. Guy-approved foliage. Here's what you need to build your personal office Shangri-la in 2023.

- Mark Ellwood

SO YOU FINALLY persuaded HR to buy you that standing desk. Congrats! (Also: Welcome to 2023.) Maybe you've invested in a stress ball, tomato timer, foam roller, and standard-issue sound-cancelling headphones, too. This is all great stuff to improve your daily grind, and we wholeheartedly approve. But if you think you've done everything you can to pimp your workspace for the sake of your productivity, you've still got a ways to go. With the smart buys that follow, you can turn any drab cubicle into an oasis of good energy and intense focus where great work gets done. Because when you're at the office, you should work smarter and faster, not harder.

Get a more charitable foundation

Sure, a standing desk helps break the office monotony, but it also shifts all that body weight from your ass to your knees and feet. What else to get? A standing mat. You can probably get by with a thick slice of rubber. The ergonomic love child of a skateboard and a Bosu ball.

Sit up straight

If you can't opt for a sit-stand setup, you can at least invest in a gizmo that will improve your seated posture. A bunch of upstarts are battling to design the best one, but my favourite so far is the Kneeling Chair (R4 289, ergonomicsdirect.co.za) which is a chair that offers excellent ergonomic support and ease of use. It is ideally suited for people suffering from lower-back problems as the chair reduces the amount of pelvic rotation normally associated with sitting. The ergonomic design eases the hip forward and encourages an upright posture by aligning the back, shoulders and neck to relieve strain and reduce the stress in the intervertebral discs in the lumbar region of the back.