Comfort Zone

The notebooks put furniture next to food, which looks odd until you think about how many hours a day you spend in contact with a chair, a mattress and a desk. Rest is a physical arrangement before it is a state of mind.

The mattress

You will spend something close to a third of your life on it. The research does not support any single firmness for everyone; medium-firm suits most people with back pain better than very hard or very soft. What matters more is that it still supports you - most mattresses are past their useful life by about eight to ten years, and sagging is what wrecks a back.

The chair and the desk

Feet flat, thighs roughly parallel to the floor, screen at eye level so the neck is not held forward for eight hours. The forward head posture that comes from a low laptop is behind an enormous amount of neck and shoulder pain.

The best posture is the next one. No chair is good enough to sit in for three hours without moving.

The bedroom

Cool, dark and quiet, in that order of importance. Blackout curtains and a fan do more for sleep than most things sold for sleep.