Your Monitor Is Too Low
The dullest possible advice, and it fixes more neck pain than anything we do with our hands.
I run the clinic’s desk assessments, which means I have looked at several hundred workstations. The same four things are wrong almost every time.
The Monitor
Top of the screen at or slightly below eye level, an arm’s length away. A laptop on a desk puts it roughly twenty centimetres too low, which is why the laptop-plus-separate-keyboard arrangement is worth the forty pounds it costs.
The Chair Height Follows the Desk
Set the chair so your forearms are level with the desk surface, then deal with your feet afterwards — a footrest if they no longer reach. Most people do it the other way round and end up reaching upward all day.
The Second Monitor Problem
If you use two screens equally, put them symmetrically with the join in front of you. If one is primary, put that one straight ahead and the second to the side. What causes trouble is a primary screen permanently off to one side, held there by a slight neck rotation for eight hours.
Movement Beats Posture
No position is good for four hours. The best workstation in the world does not compensate for not moving, and a mediocre one with a break every forty minutes usually produces fewer symptoms than a perfect one you never leave.