Phone booths are built for a quick call, not a two-hour stint, so it is easy to end up hunched over a tiny ledge on a stool that came from nowhere. Before you write the whole thing off, though, a booth actually has one thing going for it that a comfy chair does not. With a couple of tweaks, you can make the small space work in your favour.

The stool is quietly on your side

Perching on a higher stool is not the poor cousin of a proper chair. When you sit up high, your hips open out past a right angle, and that more open angle helps your pelvis sit in a position where your lower back can keep its natural inward curve. Sinking low into a soft seat tends to do the opposite. So the perch you got landed with is often kinder to your back than the sofa in the break room, as long as you sit up into it rather than slumping down over the ledge.

Bring the screen up to meet you

The usual catch in a booth is a low ledge, which drags your head down towards the laptop. You could try raising the screen with anything to hand, a bag, a couple of books, even an upturned bin, so it sits closer to eye level. If you only need to read or listen, holding the laptop up or leaning back so you look down with your eyes rather than folding your whole neck makes a surprising difference over a long call.

The real catch is staying still

Here is the part that booths get wrong. Your body likes to make small shifts and adjustments all the time when you sit, quietly offloading one area and then another. A cramped booth boxes you in, so you end up frozen in one shape far longer than you would at a normal desk. That stillness, more than the stool itself, is what leaves you stiff. Knowing that, the fix is simply to not treat it as somewhere to settle in for hours.

Set up for the call, then step out

Think of the booth as a short-stay spot. Duck in for the call or the focused half hour, then step out to grab water, take a lap or simply stand tall for a moment before the next thing. If your neck or shoulders feel tight after being folded into a small space, VIDA has a short guided stretch video you can follow at your own pace to open things back out.

A quick checklist to get going

• Sit up tall on the stool rather than slumping down over the ledge.
• Raise the screen towards eye level with whatever is to hand.
• Keep booth sessions short rather than settling in for hours.
• Step out to move or stand between calls.
• Notice when stillness is what is making you stiff, and break it up.

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