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Ask Slashdot: Have You Tried a Standing Desk?
An anonymous reader writes: Evidence is piling up that sitting down all day is really bad for you. I work primarily from home, and as I grow older, I'm starting to worry about long term consequences to riding a desk full-time. We talked about this a few years ago, but the science has come a long way since then, and so have the options for standing desks. My questions: do you use a standing desk? What kind of setup do you have? There are a lot of options, and a lot of manufacturers. Further studies have questioned the wisdom of standing all day, so I've been thinking about a standing/sitting combo, and just switching every so often. If you do this, do you have time limits or a particular frequency with which you change from sitting to standing?
I'm also curious about under-desk treadmills — I could manage slowly walking during parts of my work, and the health benefits are easy to measure. Also, any ergonomic tips? A lot of places seem to recommend: forearms parallel to the ground, top of monitor at eye level, and a pad for under your feet. Has your experience been the same? Those of you who have gone all-out on a motorized setup, was it worth the cost? The desks are dropping in price, but I can still see myself dropping upward of $1k on this, easily.
I'm also curious about under-desk treadmills — I could manage slowly walking during parts of my work, and the health benefits are easy to measure. Also, any ergonomic tips? A lot of places seem to recommend: forearms parallel to the ground, top of monitor at eye level, and a pad for under your feet. Has your experience been the same? Those of you who have gone all-out on a motorized setup, was it worth the cost? The desks are dropping in price, but I can still see myself dropping upward of $1k on this, easily.
the last one.
I worked for one year at a company which offers standing desks. I found them to be pretty nice. It was hard to gauge productivity, because it was also my only time in an open office, so there were lots of other distractions I wasn't used to.
I'm in my early 40's, and I'm starting to run into a variety of back problems from poor posture / poor back muscle tone, as well as carpal tunnel and medial nerve (funny bone) problems from the way I rest my arms on the desk when coding. A standing desk helps with pretty much all of those things, if it can be easily readjusted over the course of the day to accommodate you need to both sit and stand.
The biggest problem is that decent standing desks aren't cheap, and companies treat them like a luxury. I seriously think there's a case for OSHA forcing companies to offer adjustable desks to office workers. Unfortunately, national politics don't currently favor such actions becoming reality.
If I have enough negotiating power, I'll make a standing desk a requirement for any future job I take.
I've gone the other way. The couch desk. Actually it's more like just a couch.
Who ordered that?
I could get used to it, but since it's so easy to move it can also cope with the recent findings that a mix of standing and sitting works best.
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If you're adding a treadmill, you'd better be ready to spend more than a grand.
>> Have You Tried a Standing Desk?
Only when I've had to mash something into a console at a server rack. My solution to the whole "not sitting around" bit has been to avoid long stints in heads-down dev roles. Instead, I walk around a lot talking to people, go for walks/runs/bikes, park a good half-mile or more away from the office, etc.
I put together a standing desk from Ikea bits and pieces with a chair the allowed me to sit at the desk, stand, rest.
What I learned: Standing in one position all day, especially on a hard surface locks your knees and muscles. You need a soft surface, to stand on.
Being able to sit for some tasks and stand for others, is perfect. But you need awareness to switch between the them regularly and get away from your desk.
I could not stand a treadmill desk. It's essentially multi-tasking. It's like drinking coffee while walking.
So... it's not just one or other. It's balance...
I can't stand for more than a couple of hours without my back hurting. Parking my ass back in my Aeron chair fixes it. Walking for long periods is a problem for me right now, too.
Must be broken. But if I had a standing desk, I'd just be looking for a stool to go with it right now
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I tried and it was hard for a week. After that, it was great. The key: a desk you can move up and down. If you think you will enjoy standing 100% of the time from now on, you are wrong. Plus Standing for extended periods of time might not be as bad as sitting but isn't optimal either. The best is to alternate thorough the day, which is super easy if your desk can follow you in 5 seconds. All my colleagues with bad standing desk experiences had locked standing desk so they end up sitting for a few hours a day in really uncomfortable positions.
It's a nice desk, fashionable, well-made, holds plenty of weight without complaint. It schedules when I should stand up and sit down, and the "breathe" gentle reminder is effective without being obtrusive.
The biggest downside is that the sensor that detects whether or not you are standing next to it is extremely picky about distance. Apparently I often stand too close and so it doesn't always recognize that I'm there and credit me accordingly. Also, it would be better if it integrated with Apple's HealthKit in addition to their own cloud stuff. Do I really want data about when I'm at my home office desk to even exist, let alone be stored in the cloud? No - that's pretty much a "Let's figure out the best time to burglarize my house" toolkit.
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I've been dabbling with standing desks a lot, and am getting to really like them, except that I find standing for extended periods considerably more uncomfortable than walking. I've considered doing the treadmill-desk thing, but don't really have the space for it. What I did find helps a lot is "rocker-bottom" shoes with thick curved soles such as Shape-Ups. The instability encourages me to be constantly moving and flexing my knees, drastically reducing the discomfort of standing still without requiring any expensive space-filling treadmills.
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I prefer the 135-degree angle slouch in a chair that can lean back over a standing desk. The ergonomics just can't be beat, especially when you consider what a standing desk does to your forearms (I see a lot of people with standing desks leaning on them).
But I have a bunch of dogs and other animals so even though I work from home now I get up quite a bit to walk around and see how things are doing. I find the dogs love me more than my desk.
Peace, or Not?
I have a laptop where I work, and I periodically stick a cardboard box under my laptop and stand up at my desk. Maybe it's not ideal, but for the price I find it acceptable. You could always try this before you decide to shell out the 1k+, it's not like your body knows the difference. Also, as far as frequency goes, I did the whole 20 minutes/5 minutes thing, though I often forgot to sit down after five minutes.
Have 2 bad knees, standing desks are not an option.
As someone who transitioned from standing on a hard concrete floor wearing steel-toed boots for 8 hours a day to a desk job: that was one of the best days of my life, and I am in no hurry to go back to standing up all day. That being said, I do try to walk around for a bit every now and then during the day, even if it is just across the building to talk with someone for 10-15 minutes.
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This is called "PHYSICAL LABOR".
It may be a foreign concept to you. If so, keep in mind that some symptoms of physical labor are muscle fatigue and pain after extended time.
Most people use the standing desk on/off. Some of them mostly use it off.
Also note that given that you are on slashdot during business hours. You might not feel comfortable using a standing desk - and the extra attention it brings - while looking at slashdot or other non-work related web sites.
A standing desk, if you use it consistently, will work in that it will keep you in better physical condition. But only if you are the kind of guy that will put up with PHYSICAL LABOR.
Most people that suddenly decide to try physical labor hate it and quickly quit. It's similar to a gym membership.
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go on craigslist, buy a cheap treadmill. You don't need a desk specific one. put a board across the treadmill arms and put your laptop/screen, keyboard and mouse on it. Adjust the height with some 2x4"s. set the speed at 1-2mph, any faster and you'll be concentrating more on walking than working. On conference calls, teh whine of the treadmill does go over the call, stop walking when talking.
i've been working standing up a few years back - it was a nice change, but i needed a (not very ergonomic) barstool for long work sessions. since then i worked sitting down again - now with back problems creeping in i got me a â500 ikea motorized desk - i've yet to try it for longer working sessions but i already knew, i've made the right choice just after the first ten minutes working on it. definitely worth it. working standig up also makes me walk around more - just take a few paces and think about something instead of leaning back in your chair. it can also change your perspective on some work. in regards to the frequency of switching and ideal height - just listen to your body - try to stand upright in a relaxed pose, when your hands lie on the keyboard mouse and position your screens so that you can look straight at them. sit down, when tired.
Trigger clamped a plank of shelving to the handles of my treadmill. Works wonderfully as a comfortable standing desk; set to ~2 mph, I can walk at a gentle pace and still have perfectly good trackpad and keyboard control.
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They're the kind that you can run up and down. They're great, as long as:
1) you have a soft surface ( padded matt, etc) to stand on.
2) you have the ability to change it up, so you can sit for maybe an hour spaced throughout the day.
no problem adjusting to it.
If you make the leap don't do it all at once. Start with an adjustable workstation so you can switch back and forth. I made the switch a year ago and it was a disaster. It might have been a camel and straw situation but the result was serious back issues. I had been working in a sitting position for almost 20 years and switched to a non-adjustable standing workstation. Just FYI...
I switched to doing about 75-80% of my work standing up about two years ago. I stand for a half hour, lie down flat for 3 minutes. Rinse, repeat.
It will take a bit to get used to it, but I have more energy through the day, and just plain feel much better. When I'm in a situation where I need to sit all day now I really notice how much harder it is on the body.
Important point: You need GOOD SHOES. I have really comfy ergonomic sandals, makes a massive difference.
Don't run out and spend a lot of money on one without trying one out. I use the dresser in my son's room for an hour or 2 per day. Switching between standing and sitting is a good idea. You should consider getting a low stool to prop a foot on as that will help your posture.
Then, if you find it useful, get a fancy solution
I wanted to try a standing desk for as little cash as possible. I used some wire rack shelving and tie wraps. Similar to this - http://www.amazon.com/Seville-... Removed one shelf. Positioned the middle shelf at the appropriate height. Used the tie wraps and attached to the middle shelf to create an 'L' shaped work environment. Used shelf liners and nylon cutting boards for work surfaces. Left the wire rack for under my laptop for ventilation. Positioned my printer in the bottom rack for balancing weight. I love using this inexpensive and versatile setup.
I've switched and got about 5 other employees to switch. I think the best thing to do is to get a standing option with a stool so you can switch around. You can't get too comfortable in any one position for more than 15-20 minutes forcing you to stay on the move.
At my last job the desk space (non-adjustable shelves on the walls) were at standing height. We had the higher chairs to sit in. I should be worried about my health but I never stood at my desk for that reason. What I liked about it is that I was often shuffling back and forth between several workstations all around the room and it's a lot easier to do that when the desks are standing height. Also, I found sitting all day to be annoying. It was nice to stand up for a few minutes and stretch my legs.
I am almost 6ft tall. I never really wished for a more adjustable space.
using the ikea LACK side table on top of my normal desk, which puts my keyboard and mouse right and hand-height. You can use a circular saw to cut the legs off to your exact specifications.
+ tall VIVO desk mount monitor stand, which raises the monitor & laptop to eye height.
+ hog heaven floor mat to stand on.
The rare times I need to sit, I just unplug my laptop and take it over to a chair. In theory, the monitor height is easily adjustable via a fast-latch, and the ikea stand can be removed, so within a minute I could be back to a normal desk - but i find the change of environment from disconnecting and moving to a separate space is more relaxing.
My lower back used to hurt CONSTANTLY, but since I've been standing it has been a night-and-day improvement. I can't recommend it enough. the transition period was surprisingly easy. I suggest taking your chair away completely for the first week or two - if it's nearby you will be tempted to cheat, and far more likely to give up, I think.
I've used desks that adjust so you can stand or sit, they are a good thing.
I often felt I did better work standing than sitting.
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On any given day only one or two people use them out of an office of 30 people. I write code and find it distracting to stand while trying to solve problems or troubleshoot. I'll use it while on a conference call from time to time but that's about it. I prefer to take walks periodically than stand at my desk.
I wrote an article about my solution. http://brightrocketdesign.com/blog/post/dont-just-sit-there-getting-fit-with-a-treadmill-desk
I picked up a couple from here: http://theupstandingdesk.com/. I also have an elevated table on milk crates as I have a work table with several different embedded hardware projects on it.
I recommend a thick pad to stand on as well. I have one from u-line.
Took about 2 weeks before standing all day was no longer uncomfortable. Been standing for about 3 months.
I'm on my feet all day anyway. When I need/want to do some paperwork, I want to SIT DOWN for a little while. Sitting may not be good for you, but standing on a concrete floor all day isn't much better.
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Works very well. You can set it at any height you like. Not too expensive either, at least as compared to other motorized adjustable desks. I'm pleased with it overall.
I am looking at backing this. I did my own experiments and this actually is a very comfortable position to be in for long periods of time
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1133385494/leanchair-the-portable-reclining-standing-desk
Remember waterbeds? you don't?? ("hey everybody! an old man is talking!") So that was nearly there, some bright entrepreneur (you sir, in the back, the one texting his stockbroker) needs to combine the "work paradigm" with the "waterbed conceptualization" to form: the water-station. the mark-III will include a endless lap pool attachment.
I find it suspicious that sitting is suddenly mega-dangerous. I'm sure there are risks but they seem a bit exaggerated. Is this the new "fish oil" scam? A lot of the expensive standing desks and treadmills certainly look like a nice way to make money.
So... you became a manager?
FWIW, I have two friends/colleagues who tried sitting on excercise balls at their desks. Both of them stuck with it, but for different reasons. One guy (Engineer that used it at the office) said it helped his back pain (he was recovering from a hernia at the time), the other dude (mortgage broker who used it at home) said it helped him build his core muscles and he felt healthier from doing it.
I looked into standing desks years ago and chose to buy a HumanScale Float Table. It was expensive, but it is an investment. I chose this table over the others because it is purely mechanical (no electronics or motors) and does not use a hand crank. Instead you screeze a lever and can easily lift the table up or down faster than any motorized or hand crank table. It has a patented counter balance system to make it very easy to lift no matter how much weight is on the table. Also there is no bar in the way of your feet. I think it is German engineered and is excellent. I'm very happy with it. The only issue is that I don't use it in stand mode very often. I need to stand every day.
Best desk I've ever had. So good I bought a second one for home use.
Want to stand? No problem. Want to sit? Go ahead, it takes five seconds to adjust.
It's nice and solid, is made in the USA, and comes pre-assembled.
http://www.ergodesktop.com/
I use one at work. You need adjustable monitors as well. I actually stand on a balance board while I stand. A treadmill would be great if I worked at home, but that's not going to happen here at work :)
My company raised my desk (at my request) to a standing level a little over a year ago. I'm a generally healthy (10 lbs overweight) 48 year old guy and like most engineers, I get very little exercise. I was suffering from back pain a lot at the time. I made a really cushy thing for my feet (standing mat on top of plywood on top of 1x2 spacers so I get the extra flex from the plywood).
I keep a bar stool at my desk and alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day - averaging probably about half the time on each. When I try to stand more than half of my day, my feet start hurting.
I hate my standing desk. No doubt about it. Standing sucks. *BUT* I hated having backaches much more and those are essentially gone now. The only time my back hurts now is when I actually overdo it at home or I have a three day weekend and I spend a lot of time sitting in my recliner (like I did last holiday weekend). This tends to go away quickly and it's a pretty good trade-off.
I have the Uplift 900. My company was very generous with the desk budget, so I went all out and got an 80" wide top. The 80" width is big enough for all my work, but if I were buying it again, I would *not* buy the desk top from Uplift. The price is too high for the quality- I think it probably costs a fortune to ship a big heavy desk top. The digital memory keypad is well worth the money. The Uplift castor wheels are also worthwhile. The Uplift keyboard tray is solid, but nothing special. There are better keyboard trays out there, and I definitely recommend getting a keyboard tray. The cable management kit is overpriced and next to useless.
Keep in mind that at standing height, the desk does have a little bit of wobble, especially if you use the castor wheels. My monitor was unsafely wobbly and I had to use a wood clamp to clamp it to the desk for safety. Part of this is due to my monitor- for a 28" screen, the included stand has a small (too small) footprint and odd weight distribution. For most monitors this probably won't be a problem.
I tend to stand until after lunchtime, then sit the rest of the day, depending on how heavy a lunch I eat. My back problems from a car accident 2 years ago have nearly disappeared. Best feature of a standing desk is eating lunch- your lap isn't in the path of falling food objects. If there is a spill imminent, you can simply dodge out of the way. I haven't spilled lunch on my pants since I got the desk.
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Here's a previous reply I made on the same subject:
I'm a coder who stands all day ...and I've been doing it for over two years now. I used to experience back pain when I sat all day, but that went away after a month or so. I used to get sleepy after lunch when I sat all day... not so much anymore. You really do get used to it. A few suggestions for those who want to try it:
1) Make the switch the first day you get back from a longer holiday and are already out of your normal routine.
2) You *must* get a nice floor mat, preferably a dense memory foam mat designed for standing cubes. Working in your socks (if your employer will let you) while standing on said mat almost feels like a foot massage.
3) Another *must* - don't get a desk-height chair! At least, not for a while. You'll find yourself sitting way too often and never get adjusted to standing all day. Most of my fellow "standing" co-workers that have tall chairs sit at least 80% of the time.
4) It takes a couple weeks to get used to standing. Stick with it.
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I have one of these at work, and I've been pretty happy with it: http://www.varidesk.com
It's less flexible than some of the real standing desks --- it only has two positions, down and up --- but it does the job, and it's cheaper. I did find I needed an under-desk keyboard tray for the sitting position, though: my desk was already a bit high for me, keyboard-wise, and the slight additional elevation from the varidesk made it too much.
At my last workplace I converted an Ikea desk (forget the model name) to something that would work as a standing desk. I have CP that affects my legs, so throughout the day I would alternate between standing on an anti-fatigue mat and sitting on a stool that approached the desired height.
What I found was that alternating between sitting and standing was ideal, but that I couldn't always focus on certain types of tasks while standing. Anything that required a lot of my attention caused me to sit down... Stuff like coding or deep troubleshooting. So I started sitting down more. Then I started developing some stiffness and pain in my neck and shoulders due to bad ergonomics caused by sitting on that stool.
My advice: Get a standing desk if you like, but ensure you get either an adjustable height desk (again, Ikea is now offering these with a turn crank or button press operation for a lot less than some places I've seen) or get a chair/stool that is the appropriate height. Also, don't think just because you're standing all day, you're getting healthier. You should still step away from your desk for a short break once at hour at the minimum, and walk around some.
I bought an electric adjustable height desk leg set (UpLift 900) from thehumansolution.com and bought a complete desk shell elsewhere for just the top (at quite a savings) in the size that I wanted. I like a deep desk and this one is 30". They've got even more options now for building your own desk including treadmills.
I found that standing didn't work out for me... however the adjustable height of the desk has made my sitting time far more comfortable and ergo.
I've been using a standup desk exclusively for over a decade now and I'll never willingly go back to sitting all day.
Couple of thoughts:
1. Make it tall enough so you have to stand straight up and look straight ahead (not look down or up at your screen).
2. I like mine to be deep so the keyboard is far in and I can lay mt arms out on the desktop while typing. Hell, my son spent much of the first year of his life sleeping for hours on a pad on my desktop nestled between my arms, chest and keyboard while I worked.
3. Get a really tall drafters chair. While standing is nice; it also nice to be able to take a seat once in a while for a few minutes or while stuck on an exasperating conference call.
4. Get a small step stool or bucket or something that you can put 1 foot on at a time to bend one leg. This gives you a chance to rest one leg -- it really helps especially when getting started.
I used to have the common hunch of a programmer; switching to a standup desk fixed my posture so I stand up straight and don't have a hunch any longer.
>> So... you became a manager?
Bingo. I usually do that for a couple of years at a time (while coding side projects under the table), then switch back to corporate coding at a local innovator to stay somewhat fresh on emerging technologies, build trends, etc.
Buy a normal used treadmill for cheap, probably off craigslist for less than a normal table, then either bolt on a platform to the control panel to set a laptop on, or rip the control panel out and set a normal tabletop desk over it and attach the panel to that somewhere. My boss has one and i love it, i cant stand, standing still for hours, but walking forward at 2MPH is as easy as sitting.
I get so antsy if I sit all day. I only lasted about two weeks at my current job before I MacGyvered my sitting desk into a standing desk. It's got a built-in hutch. So I put my keyboard inside the hutch and the monitor on top of the hutch. Huge improvement. It took about a month for my legs and feet to get used to it, but I knew after the first day I couldn't go back. I definitely think a proper adjustable standing desk would be better, though. I *have* to stand in my setup. Occasionally it would be nice to be able to sit down for a specific task.
Has turned my legs into toothpicks, my back into a wretched and twisted line, and my chest and shoulders have reversed their roles. Over the weekend I noticed how loudly I have to grunt and exert to pull my scrawny 150lb frame out of my desk chair. I decided to get back into my calisthenics routine. My legs are currently on fire from doing 15 squats.
Everyone at my small company has one. They aren't cheap, but neither are oscilloscopes, good computers, multi-monitor setups, office space, lab benches, etc.
Not everyone here adjusts them regularly, but I'd say around half of us do. It's good to adjust sit/stand posture multiple times a day. Also, for some workflows, we're in and out of our office / lab for multiple iterations and having the workspace at our standing height is just more convenient.
We also use the stand mode quite a bit for sharing / desk meetings / etc. I'm the one in charge of buying office furniture and it's unlikely we will buy anything else in the near future for office desks.
being tall is problematic.
For starters, I was not able to find any way with what I had at my disposal to setup a standing desk without having to look downwards all day long. Having your head tilted down all day is bad. The company doesn't want to buy us new monitors (I'm still on a 19in 4:3 Acer that only does VGA) and at the time, my laptop was too small to push far away. So I really had no means of being able to type comfortably, and look straight ahead at what I was doing.
Secondly, being 6'7 (200cm), standing up is a bit awkward in a cubicle environment. While cubicles are not 100% private, they at least offered some illusion of privacy. Standing up however, there is no question about it. You're pretty much out in the open. Kinda sucks to feel like everyone is looking at you.
So to get my standing, I just go out for a cigarette ;)
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I'm standing at an Ikea electric sit/stand desk for the last 6 months and absolutely love it. I start standing in the morning and usually take a sit-break early to mid-afternoon then up and down a handful of times thru the afternoon - mostly standing with 20 minute breaks every once in a while. It's an excellent way to avoid the commitment of standing 100% of the time and the knee/foot/cushioning issues that standing all day raises.
It's been absolutely astounding for my back - keeping my core body muscles shifting and moving all day is an absolute joy.
I thought I'd need to "work up to standing" but I pretty much hit 80-85% right out of the gate and it's stayed pretty consistent.
I absolutely love it and I'd encourage anyone that can afford to give it a swing - it'll cost yout about $500 to give it a try, a couple hundred more for the corner desk which gives you a lot more space for notebooks, reference material, etc.
I wouldn't go back. I have a standing desk at the office and my WFH space. At the office it was pretty easy because our cubes include adjustable work surfaces. For my office at home I built a standing desk with parts from IKEA for less than $250. It's basically a kitchen counter top on top of a bookcase. You need to make sure that you have the work space set up correctly with the keyboard and monitor at the proper height. With a standing desk you can't just keep slouching down.
Like any change a standing desk takes some getting used to for most people. I have been blessed with good posture and I have never had any back problems. Try it for a couple of hours at a time and work your way up. Make sure you're standing up straight, keep your arms at 90 degrees, and try to keep your monitor at a height where you can look straight ahead.
Beyond just standing, take frequent breaks to move around. Other posts on Slashdot have pointed out that frequent breaks and physical activity improve overall performance. Get off your ass, stand up straight and move.
I built my own standing desk. Just some scrap 2x2s for the legs and some piece for the top and keyboard rest. Measured for my work desk to the get ergonomics right (or close). Inspired by some ideas http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/I... and http://www.homedit.com/ikea-st...
Also, I've heard to make sure you have anti fatigue mats for your feet. Mine were 6 bucks at Harbor Freight (only using 2 of 4).
I started last October just trying it out, and could only stand for and hour or two at a time. I just moved my standing desk to the floor when I needed to sit at the desk (laptop, keyboard, 2nd monitors and trackpad . . . took all of a minute to switch!! ). Around Dec or Jan I made the change to stand to all the time and make it through my day (~9 hrs) handily.
I'm glad I didn't purchase an expensive adjustable desk because it would just live in the standing position all the time now. If you can use a ruler and a power drill, just make your own with that IKEA trick, and switch it off your desk as needed. Doesn't take more than a minute even with wires in the back and will save you a boatload of money.
Don't be fooled though, I still have a chair. I look for chances to sit during the day (brainstorming with colleague, meetings, etc) and it DOES feel nice to sit down. But for the day-to-day, standing has been great and I don't have plans to switch back any time soon.
I updated my work station about 2 years ago, and the wife wanted hers about 3-4 months later. I rarely use it in the sitting mode anymore, but I do really like being able to adjust the height to it isn't in the same position all the time.
I do have a nice mat because I like to roam around barefoot at home and more than a couple hours straight on hardwood without shoes made my feet unhappy. With decent shoes I never had an issue.
I went with an UPLIFT from http://www.thehumansolution.com/uplift-900-electric-sit-stand-desk-base-black.html I just got the base and made a table top out of 2x6 clear pine boards. I spent a little bit extra to get the undermount CPU holder...but needed to make some tweaks to get it to fit the desk like I wanted. I also just screwed a UPS to the underside so I only have one power cable. I think I found a coupon and free shipping and came in about $550 each, then bought a standing mat last year for $80 or so on amazon. I think I remember an email from them saying they have a cheaper option that doesn't have "memory" in the controller.
I have large monitors with lots of vertical real estate, so I like my eye level to be a couple inches below the monitor bezel, but I find I rarely adjust the monitor (it is connected to the desktop).
Good luck in your search, Oh, I have no association with the UPLIFT guys other than being a satisified customer.
The company I work basically made them the default desk. So everyone in the company has an adjustable desk. Not all use them to stand, some only an hour or two, some all day. We use a motorized desk with push buttons for up/down. No memory or automatic raise lower at set times etc, just the basic desk. I found it helps a lot to have monitor stands so that they are raised up to eye level. I also go for my arms parallel to the ground when standing. Normally I will stand for about half the day. Usually not all at once, but throughout the day I find it nice to be able to stand for a couple hours, sit for a couple etc. The desks are nice - the PC sits in a mount and it has connections for routing of cables, AC outlets on top of the desk and 4 USB ports. I'm seriously considering getting one of these at home.
Yes, I got a GeekDesk (http://www.geekdesk.com/) for home last year to help with lower back pain, and I can't imagine going back. I opted for the v3 with a 63" wide birch veneer top, which set me back about $950 after shipping. There are fancier models if you're willing to spend more, but this one has worked well for me.
I spend a lot of time at my computer, either working or gaming. I haven't established any strict schedules for sitting vs standing, but I typically start working around 9am standing up and switch to sitting after my legs get tired around 3pm. Conversely, if I spent all day at the office sitting down, I'll usually stand while gaming in the evenings. Having that kind of balance has done wonders to help alleviate back pain for me. My chair wasn't cheap either, but there's still a limit to how much time I can spend sitting down without my back flaring up.
The real trick is to keep working your upper body while standing.
http://i.imgur.com/4XCcwQa.gif...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Seems to work for our purposes. We attach monitor mounts to it when necessary. The adjustable base is built like a tank.
http://www.ergotron.com/Produc...
At $700 it's not cheap, but a good sitting desk can run that much.
Standing desks seem like a fad at the place I work. Most of the people that received standing desks used them for a week to a month before they went back to sitting at the desks full time. The only time I see them using their standing desk is if they have a visitor in the office.
Standing and sitting, under desk treadmills, this sounds familiar... Oh yeah, The Zero Theorem.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I am mid-40's with back and sciatica problems and also recovering from recent laparoscopic surgery. I have been using a balance ball as my chair for 8 years, which worked for me pretty well up until a few months ago. (Now sitting hurts.)
I find I lose my ability to concentrate while standing-- I don't have the deep-focus time I used to get. I also need to have something to lean on periodically (bar height chair from ikea works). For me, the "zero-g" chairs aren't any good; not sure if it is a height thing or what. Locking your knees defeats the benefits of standing to some degree, and you really need to properly contract your abs to brace your spine. A treadmill would not help me personally.
The best advice seems to be to be at a healthy weight, have a strong core and actively engage it in whatever position you are in, change positions regularly, and find an excuse to walk around regularly throughout the day. There is no substitute for excercise though.
I have been on a treadmill desk for 4 years now. I highly recommend the standing up part, but not the treadmill part, and probably not for the reason you think. Does walking make it hard to type/think? Not really, not for me. It's the walking posture that's the problem. The real problem with the treadmill is that with your shoulders locked facing forward to type and use the mouse, your walking posture gets really poor. I have hurt my calves several times due to the awkward way I have been walking (not swinging my arms and rotating my shoulders like I should, for example). If you can go hands-free the whole time, it may be great for you, but I am personally switching to a Fluidstance level (ordered it a couple months back, should arrive soon...I hope). Just standing and you tend to "stand hard", leaning on your joints in a way that gets painful. You need to keep shifting your weight around to really make it work well.
For my setup, I got a cheap Chinese made standing desk frame and bought the table top from Ikea. I cut, sanded and stained the table to my liking. I also routed the wires and moved the up/down switch to where I'd want it. I previously had a Fit Desk stationary bike so I pulled the desk (it goes where the handlebars normally are) off and used under the standing desk. This whole setup was probably around $400 USD total. I could have done it cheaper buy buying the same stationary bike as the Fit Desk (can be found much cheaper at ~$70 USD)
I've always wondered about sitting on the floor with a pad and no back, and treating it like a meditative posture (so keeping a straight back is paramount). Has anyone tried this for work?
If not, has anyone spent a considerable amount of time meditating on the floor? I'm wondering if it's still stressful on your back a
I tried it, not with a proper standing desk but simulating one the best I could one day.
I did like it a lot, and would spend a good bit of my day standing with the option but, it wasn't something I found I could jump right into. I don't simply stand all day, so I am just not used to it and it was painful after a while. I found myself needing to sit.
That said, I did feel that if it was part of my normal work environment, that I could transition from seated to standing, I think I would use it frequently.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Put a file box on your desk. Put your laptop on top. Put a towel or something soft on the floor, to stand on. Stand there and work. I'm doing it now.
I'm 5'9", YMMV. It can be adjusted upward with different thick books, newspapers, etc. Try it for a while before investing $1k in a desk that moves.
Rather than treadmills, which instill a sense of walking and getting nowhere, corporate overlords now recommend Jacobs Ladders, so you can be climbing all day and not getting any higher.
There are some potential problems with other types. I have set up others here in the office that are clamp-on or surface mounted, and they can have trouble with multiple monitors, for example. One worker had to give it up because the lift that was stong enough to support her three monitors was too strong for her to pull back down.(oops!)
There are others in the office are using them with a little "micro-elliptical" device like this, and I would love to try a treadmill. Unfortunately I would have to put the whole desk up on blocks to get the extra height, and that also makes it more of a "standing-only" situation.
I use a Varidesk for my laptop standup station and love it. Have had it about 8 months and definitely feel the difference on my back and feel generally more healthy.
Gil
I wouldn't want to try one. For one, standing still for long hours isn't that good for you, either. For another, that's a *great* idea, now management can make your working/living space even smaller (Dilbert's old Velcro on your back, and hang you on the wall coming, soon).
Then there's those of us with other issues, like my arthritis.
I'm waiting for the introduction of not only treadmills under the desk, but have them generate electricity, so you produce ROI doubly.....
And ergonomics? I sit with my keyboard in my lap, several feet from my monitors. The way my cube's aligned, I can't really put my feet on the desk, but that meets all those ergonomic criteria, y'know, with wrists supported, monitors straight ahead....
mark
I got the Ikea Bekant http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S99022526/; it's great, solidly built, and less than $500US. I used a felt pen on the legs to mark my optimum sitting and standing heights so that I don't have to take five minutes fine-tuning the height every time I change heights (which would have guaranteed that I would never change the height!).
Sometimes I change multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. It's great.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
I have an electric sit-stand that I cobbled together from a nice Ikea top and an old (hideous) electric sit-stand desk we found on Craigslist.
Standing gets old, sitting does too. Need to be able to move the top up and down to get the best of both worlds.
You'll really want a cable tray, and a couple long outlet bars for the back of it. You're screwed if you don't manage cables and provide power that floats up and down with you. Monitor arm helps, too - I like Ergotrons. I mount my KVM switch, my USB and Gigabit Ethernet hubs, my Thunderbolt dock sub-surface, so they're handy, but invisible, also float up and down with the desktop.
Check the min and max heights on your legs before you buy - wish my Craigslist model was just a teense taller, but it suffices.
There are nice motorized legs online for sale without desktops. My wife bought a set of these - they have memories for different height positions. She custom-stained a design into her own unfinished wood desktop before sealing it. Beautiful. She runs with a designed-for-desk treadmill she integrated into the whole affair.
Good chair for the sit times is a cherry on top. I have a used Aeron.
and was reasonably pleased with it. Can't say I saw any change in productivity, but it was good for my back. I've had lower back issues for years and sitting was making it worse. Unfortunately, a blown out ACL and the accompanying surgery and recovery put me back in a chair and I've been to lazy to go back.
I'm a manager and a coder. At home, I code A LOT.
Standing desks are not comfortable. My feet tend to hurt. I got one of those expensive padded rubber mats, and kick off my shoes. That seems to help.
My back (which has been a problem) seems OK with it. I ain't doing any DWTS routines anytime soon, but I haven't had a flare-up in quite some time.
Screw a treadmill. That would not end well (Think "The Jetsons"). I get up at 5AM each morning and run.
I don't use one of the fancy overpriced desks, but would like one; maybe in the future. At work, I put a credenza on top of my bog-standard desk, and at home, I got a fixed-height standing table.
http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html
Built it two years ago. Use it all day every day. Took me about a week to get used to standing, but now I hate sitting.
I've been standing for 1 year now. You're right about the ergonomics of having your arms parallel to the ground and the monitor top at eye level. You'll also want an anit-fatigue mat. The Imprint Cumulus Pro Commercial sounds good- going to try it out next week. The anti-fatigue mat is probably one of the most important parts. I started with the standesk 2200 (google it for plans / pics) - the ikea hack where you attach a shelf on brackets to the $8 Ikea Lack table. You can just set this on top of your normal sitting desk and see how you like standing for around $25. You'll definitely want an ant fatigue mat to go with it- and a firm one is good so you can shift your weight from one foot to the other and not have your foot sink in too far. I actually just got upgraded to a geek desk max- and I can highly recommend this solution. It's adjustable and even has presets for sitting / standing heights. Being able to stand AND sit is ideal- I always try to sit during meetings and take a good sitting lunch break. Using a wacom tablet is also helpful in terms of ergonomics for my wrist- but I'm often using 3D DCC applications rather than coding or or other IT work. I intitially started standing after having a lot of back and neck pain from working 70+ hours during crunch time. I was physically wrecked by sitting so much. Now I'm excited to go home and sit on the couch. And yes- I do find pain relief from sitting and standing during the day. I probably stand around 6 -7 hours a day. The first week is the toughest, but it gets easier.
I have a large screen setup. 46" on the bottom, 42" on the top. When I spend long days at the computer I often move windows to the top screen and use my system standing up. The desk is still low so funky angle on the keyboard but when my back starts to hurt or my legs fall asleep I stand up and use the system. It's a welcome change from sitting. I highly recommend it. I split the day, about 3/4's of it sitting. This has worked great for me thusfar.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Like most desks-with-chairs, the ideal work environment is going to be unique to the person and to the task.
I find writing with a paper and pen or typing for less than a few minutes at a time easier to do if I don't have to change my standing or sitting mode. I find doing the same for between a few minutes and about half an hour somewhat easier to do sitting down than standing. If I'm writing or typing more than half an hour I'm probably going to take a break anyways.
I find it uncomfortable to stand more than 6-8 hours a day or more than 1-2 hours without a 20-30 minute sit-down break, but that's just me. When I was in better physical shape (read: when I was a teenager), I could do stand-up work in a restaurant all day with just a sit-down break for meals.
As far as which stand-up desk/workstation will work best for me? I'm not sure. Given my current job requirements, I doubt any would be as good as an ordinary adjustable sit-down office chair and a typical office computer desk. I'm almost certain your job requirements are not exactly the same as mine so your ideal work environment will very likely be different as well.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sure... or you can build your own standing desk, with a bit of lumber and/or various parts. My own standing desk is hand-made woodwork, and cost significantly less than any of those mass produced items you'll find at the stores or on Amazon -- but more importantly, it's custom built to my exact needs. If you're at all good with your hands, I recommend that you skip right past the furniture stores entirely, and head to your local lumber yard instead.
(Oh... and if you're not good with your hands, go ahead and follow that link anyway. There are several links in the search results with simple and cheap solutions which require just a bit of creativity, and little else.)
Motorized desk at work. Can lower it if needed, usually standing usage. Have a chair ready if you like doing phone calls that way, I'm tall enough that if I'm on the phone while standing everyone can hear me. (5ft cube walls). At home I have a hand crank adjusted standing desk that gets lowered for gaming. I get hamstring problems from some office chairs and haven't had problems after migrating to the standing desks. Get nice shoes, something for a shop or kitchen work.
I've been using standing and sit/stand desks for about four years now. The first few were dedicated DIY standing desks that I would stand at for most of the day, taking occasional sitting breaks. Currently, I've got a VariDesk that allows me to (manually) switch between sitting and standing. It's not a sexy motorized platform, but that's a good thing, because it means my employer is willing to pay for it. Subjectively, I'd say I'm better off since I started using them (chronic lower back pain is gone now, other aches and pains are reduced too), but I don't have any hard data to prove that. The real key is to get up and move regularly. A sit/stand desk makes it easier to do that (by allowing you to stay in the zone), but even getting up to walk around every 30 minutes is supposed to be much better than just sitting all day.
My work provided me with one of these as their standard standing solution. It's not motorized, but it has pistons to assist raising/lowering that makes it relatively easy. Changing positions takes about 30s as I have to move my keyboard and mouse from the keyboard tray to the adjustable work surface.
The only cons are that it takes a bit of time to get set up correctly as you have to place a couple of stop screws to set the maximum height. It's also a little difficult to adjust the horizontal spacing on the monitor mounts (I have a 2-display setup). Other than that, it works great!
I've been trying to get my current employer into using them after having a great time with adjustable standing desks at my last employer. I sat roughly 2 hours a day, but I was regularly up-and-down (about as frequent as people who take breaks regular).
What I don't see here is how well it works for impromptu meetings. You can get a lot more people around modern multi-monitor rigs than before, and there's no thinking about it: suddenly you're presenting to 5 peers in a meeting planned only seconds ago, and everyone is comfortable & can see the screen.
BTW, Ikea has an electronically-adjusted standing desk for $489: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Most of the health problems arise due to a mixture of poor circulation and weak core muscles. The standard American diet does not help either.
Just exercise regularly and/or take up some stretching or yoga training. A good 12 to 18 months of semi-frequent (at least every other day) exercise will do wonders for your health.
At work I sit on a large exercise ball. Staying steady on the ball engages all of the muscle groups that go slack when sitting in a chair.
Everyone has adjustable workstations mounted to their desks at my work. They cost $200-300 and most people seem to like them. The only drawback is you lose the desk space. Everyone got one after my division director saw me standing while working. I placed an empty box used to ship paper on my desk and set my laptop on top of that. It's the perfect height for me. Best part is that I can reclaim my desk space easily when I am finished. if I want the box a little higher I just set a few reams of paper underneath the box.
I moved my cube desk up to standing height. At first it was all standing which, of course, hurt my feet after a long day. Then I got a bar stool to prop up every now and then. My hips started hurting.
Final solution, while not perfect, is having a regular office chair that goes much higher than usual. A random person in cubeland brought it to me after hearing about my desk. I try to spend 50/50 sit/stand. Been doing it over 2 years now.
I'd like the auto-adjustable type, but as noted above employers don't give a crap about your physical well being if it costs them money.
The science to it is basically this: When sitting, your metabolism slows, you burn less calories, and all the fun that goes with that - higher likelihood to be overweight, thus higher blood pressure, cardiac issues, and so on. We have studies that prove this too.
So, don't sit right? Well, standing isn't very good for you either, not for long periods of time. We're lacking any really hard science on what the optimal time period really is, although we know that it's variable depending on the person. We do know that you're more at risk for immediate health problems from long periods of standing rather than sitting (which results in longer term, less immediate issues). For example, even with a soft gel mat, after a few weeks, one stander ended up with medical conditions.. They're not just an anomaly either; back pain, carotid atherosclerosis - a circulation issue, varicose veins, pinched nerves, and more are associated with long periods of standing.
The fact is that we don't really know how much standing is enough to ward off the dangers of sitting, and worse, we don't know how much standing is too much and will result in health problems. There's probably an optimal healthy point, but we don't have any studies that show where that optimal healthy point is on average, much less how it needs to be adjusted for an individual.
It's also important to note that positive claims associated with standing desks that are not associated with physical well-being, such as increased mental capacity, creativity, memory, attentiveness, productivity and so on, are largely due to recirculating personal anecdotes, which we know carry a strong bias and use no objective measures for comparison. What few studies there have been show no evidence of benefit, nor of detriment. In a obvious note though, they show that treadmill or cyling desks DO reduce attention and productivity by a significant amount, and they haven't been shown to result in any impressive health gains either - users average weight loss of only about 3 lbs a year, for example, and that's about the only study you'll find on the subject!
What this all means is that, scientifically speaking, advocating for the health benefits of a standing desk is about the same as advocating for the health properties of barefoot running, clay cleansing (or really any cleanses, including charcoal, pickle juice, and others), and the whole genre of fad diets.
There's no scientific proof that shows they are a net benefit, which means you shouldn't assume they provide one. They are just standard junk science until then - taking a fact or finding and running with it past the point and on to speculation and pure fantasy. In fact, these are more akin to the fad diets, in that you're not only not gaining a benefit, you're that much more likely to cause harm to yourself. Standing desks are the new fen phen.
If you're worried about staying healthy, skip the fads and just add an exercise plan to your day. Take a 40 minute walk at lunch. Maybe workout a few times a week. Eat healthy, but more important in most western countries, eat a proper portion size. That's all it really takes.
There's a guy at work who wanted one, so we set one up. Then someone else followed suit. I decided to give it a try; my desk is not adjustable so I hacked something together. Seems quite nice.
It was slightly too high, so I fixed it by taking a 1U rackmount server that's purely scrap metal at this point and standing on that. So far very comfy.
I am still young and healthy, but my employer is too cheap to provide a standing desk without a doctor's note: this kind of attitude seems to have a short-term perspective considering the high, potential future costs of medical care.
Anyway, my cheap hack is to drink a lot of fluids---usually tea or water, so I am forced into walking breaks.
Sweetening the water significantly increases how much I drink, while making me feel like a lab rat. Using sucralose avoids growing bacteria in my water bottle and does not add calories.
A couple years ago I got a demo of an Ergotron adjustable arm, and have been using it every since. I like it a lot, but it isn't without its flaws.
First off, make sure you have an anti-stress mat to stand on. When I first started to use the arm, my feet became really sore. Standing all day on what was essentially a concrete floor with a few millimeters worth of "carpet" was too hard on my soles. The anti-stress mat relieved that completely.
Second, once you stand and raise your computer screen, you now have to raise everything else with it. This likely won't be an issue if your entire desk surface is up high, but whereas I have an arm that mounts to a normal desk it is something I've had to deal with. My keyboard, mouse, and monitors are at standing level, but my phone and anything else on my desk is down where I have to reach for it. Being in IT support, my primary computer (Windows) is on the arm while my secondary (MacBook) is on a stand on a box.
Third, standing takes getting used to, and eventually you will stand most of the time. However, sometimes you will want to sit. You'll want to have an option to sit down, whether it's an adjustable desk/arm or you can go somewhere else and work for a time.
Finally, and this is an issue mainly for my current solution with a desk-attached arm, be sure your desk/arm can hold everything you want. My Ergotron arm model is capable of dual displays, but the 23" Dells I use strain the weight limit of the arm. If I add anything more with any appreciable weight, the arm sinks down to the desk.
Overall I like my solution, and will not go back to a sitting-only desk.
mr.nobody
--Don't you wanna go where nobody knows your name?
At 6'5" and two lumbar surgeries, I have long faced back issues.
I do have and occasionally use a Exerpeutic 2000 WorkFit High Capacity Desk Station Treadmill. I'm in a bit of an open space, so it's not that practical to use during the day since it makes noise, but I can use it at night after others have gone home. It has a laptop on a stand on top of it (so the screen is about eye level), and on either side is half teh keyboard of a very old Kinesis split keyboard. It works great: I can walk readily at 5-7mph and read and type at about normal speed.
As my main sitting setup, I use a Faulkner 48977 Laguna Style Dual Burgundy Padded Recliner with Plastic Armrests, X-Large, with a keyboard on my lap (which is not the most ergonomic thing ever, but I don't experience carpel tunnel) and a laser mouse balanced precariously on the armrest. The mouse falls off the armrest relatively often.
Finally found the Ikea Bekant sit/stand in stock and have been using it for about a month. It's been worth every penny spent and I try to alternate between sitting and standing a couple of times a day. It's made a marked reduction in neck, upper back and arm pain after 10-12 hour days in the office. Even if you find you don't need the standing function everdyday, it's still useful to get the desktop adjusted to match your preferred chair height.
We talked about this a few years ago, but the science has come a long way since then
Science doesn't progress at such a pace.
There is absolutely no solid scientific evidence to prove anything of what is posted above [1]. Anthropocentric backpains do not result from chairs, but from the people using them!
[1] At least you failed to link such a study. Typical alarmist article.
My ex-wife and I found a Steelcase Brand Walk-Station that she really wanted for her home office. We ended up finding one for about 1/3 of retail that was almost brand new. We bought it. We quickly realized that it could not share the 15 amp circuit with the rest of the equipment in the office. So we wired a 115 VAC 20 Amp dedicated circuit for the adjustable height treadmill desk. She loves it. She uses it every day at a very slow walking speed while she reads her work emails, watches training videos and other lightweight tasks. It is quiet enough when on a sound absorbing rubber mat that you can talk on the telephone while walking.
The unit is first rate quality and has required very little maintenance. But she is only about 115 pounds. She probably walks about 20 miles a week on it. She also uses it for stationary standing. She has another desk that is adjusted for her to use a stability ball for her desk chair.
She is a yoga and pilates instructor. Your mileage may vary.
and stack them below your machine
So, I am over 6 feet tall and have used standing and sitting desks. My recommendation, both. When answering emails and other admin work (time sheets anyone - the joys of line supervision...) I usually stand at my kitchen bar / in the break area, or on a low cabinet attached to my desk. Analysis and think work, I sit. Here is the magic trick...
I get up and walk around. I will do some work in some of the work cubby areas we have for really small meetings. Answer emails at the lake patio, Schedule walking meetings. Don't stay in once place for hours at a time staring at a screen. Make no meeting longer then an hour... 20 minutes focused meeting are the best. Change your perspective, it helps.
Just in case you are curious... I am one productive individual and my team is commonly cited for how much they get done and how well they balance work / life.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I find that when I use it I'm more alert especially toward the end of the day. Outside of that don't really notice much else.
Strongly recommend and anti fatigue mat if you are gonna do it though.
For about a year i did a job where i'd stand in pretty much the same place for 8 and a half hours every single day. While great for your leg stamina after a year i was resorting to self harm to simply keep my mind off my hurting feet (bullshit do you get used to it!). It started with scratching myself with pins or sharp bits of metal to, by the end of the year, was cutting myself in the toilets and bandaging it up.
Thanks to that god damn job my arms and legs look like that of a suicidal teenage girl, i have scars everywhere.
You ask why not stand all day? I say because if i was forced to do it again i would gladly break my own toes.
Why should 152 comments be allowed? The comments should have been closed after two.
Ask Slashdot: Have You Tried a Standing Desk?
Comment 1: Yes.
Comment 2: No.
Done.
I built myself a standing desk out of black gas piping and fittings from Home Depot, plus a solid kitchen countertop I got at a local reclaimed construction material store (Total cost, ~200USD). It's not adjustable, but I see that as a good thing, as it forced me to adapt without copping out and sitting all day.
So far? Love it. I would recommend that you build your desk to about 1" above what it's supposed to be, and then get yourself a thick anti-fatigue mat. It's basically a thick rubber foam pad that you stand on, though in a pinch a thick pair of sneakers will do in a pinch (don't let my PT know I said that).
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You shouldn't need modern science to tell you that working all day every day, especially in your older years, is bad for you. Standing, sitting, laying, bending, reading, writing, seeing, listening, . . .it all doesn't matter. If you're concentrating on anything -- mentally or physically -- to the exclusion of all else, it'll be bad for you.
But you really ought to be thankful that you'll die sooner, since you're just working your life away.
Instead of trying to work in a healthier manner, you might want to try working less. Move thirty minutes farther from down-town, drop your cost-of-living by 50%, and start enjoying the kinds of hobbies that are effectively free.
I've been using a Lifespan 1200 walking treadmill with an appropriate height desk for about 2 years and did a standing desk for about 6 months before that. The walking desk is easier on your feet and burns more calories (directly from walking and indirectly via reduced 'resting state' time). Shoes required are very different - standing requires firm ankle support with a multi-layer sole & insole combination, while walking requires high quality shoes that limit your side-to-side foot roll.
Unfortunately, this program doesn't come cheap. You can spend $1500 for a desk & treadmill combination. (Much less if you want a crappy setup that you won't happy with, or with custom-built setup that you create yourself). Insoles replacements can add up, though shoe costs are not a problem long term if you buy high quality expensive shoes to start.
If you want absolute low cost, skip the desk and focus on frequent natural movements & a simple diet of the essentials. A rigorous exercise program can make you very fit, but won't give the long term cardio benefits of walking. Strength training will increase muscle mass that will increase your caloric load, but it doesn't give any cardio benefits at all. Diet only can eliminate the problems of weight and nutritional imbalances, but doesn't improve your cardio.
Combine a desk program with an intelligent nutritional plan (the correct nutrients at the correct time, with the correct caloric load) and you can lose a lot of weight. (I lost 100 lbs in two years.) After you reach ideal weight, you will likely find yourself consuming as much calories as what made you overweight. (If you do this, make sure you will stick with the the walking desk regimen long term for the health benefits, if you go back to sitting again, you just put yourself on the yo-yo diet program.
I've got a couple of problems that prevent me from running out to buy a standing desk:
* I'm 6'4" - just about past the upper limit for some standing desks, from what I hear;
* I've worked as a contractor for large parts of my recent professional life, quite mobile including laptop - you get to sit at whatever workspace is assigned to you, and this may change at a moment's notice.
Some chairs really do make the lower half of my body pain after a while, so I'm all for standing (part of the time, at least). What worked for me in the past is to stick an empty cardboard box under the laptop - and another one under the monitor, if a separate one has been provided. Cheap, and fairly easy to move aside when you want to sit down for a while.
The arms parallel and monitor at eye level didn't work, obviously, but even so it was quite comfortable and helped to alleviate the chair's insult to my butt.
A colleague at one more permanent place used boards and bricks to build a higher platform on his desk (days before standing desk came into fashion).
You might want to try something like that out first before shelling out money. But chances are good you are going to like it.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
At home I have an overbed table like they use in hospitals, I put the monitor for the desktop PC on this and use a little wireless keyboard and mouse. I can stand and work, or lower the table and sit if so desired. Not much workspace area but nice for at home use, and won't set you back much - those tables can be had used for $40 or so.
I'm not falling for THAT again - are you my grandfather?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The Zero Gravity workstation looks to alleviate many of the posture/spinal compression issues from sitting, although it probably doesn't help with the hypertension.
I raised my desk and worked standing only for about 1 year. It worked well, but I started getting knee pain. So last year, I bought the uplift desk. I only bought the motorized frame, and added a section of butcherblock as my desktop, and a keyboard tray - so maybe I have $700 total invested and well worth it.
With memory locations on the controls, it is trivial to switch between sitting and standing.
A good desk is going to cost decent money anyway, and since i work from home, it is my primary tool.
Standing all day is really difficult at first. It took me about two weeks to adjust, but it's still slightly uncomfortable if I stand in one place for more than about 20 minutes without moving. I consider this a feature, not a bug. Things I've noticed:
bad:
- I get frustrated more easily when coding. I often find that I have to leave my desk and pace around more often
- not comfortable
- I want to leave my desk a lot, which is bad for wearing headphones. get wireless headphones.
good:
- I don't feel tired after lunch. in general, if you're already tired, it's much easier to stand and be alert than sit and be alert
- my back feels great. I find myself unable to maintain even remotely decent posture while sitting, but I find it easier to straighten my back when standing
- I sort of absentmindedly wander around the room while thinking. This keeps me moving which is good, and I think better while pacing anyway, for some reason
- at the end of the day I feel like I've done actual *work* and I find it easier to get to sleep at a reasonable time.
Overall, it's definitely worth it.
I started standing about 15 years ago. At the time I was having pretty bad RSI issues with my hands and forearms. I stand all day, every day, it works great for me. I move around a fair amount from one foot to the other, sometimes lean on the desk. My RSI issues are history and I am generally very happy with the setup. I think part of the reason that it is so good ergonomically is that while slouching and standing _is_ possible, it isn't really all that relaxing, thus my posture is much better standing compared to sitting.
I have modified a typical sitting desk to fit my needs; it works quite well. I stacked up boxes and upside down flower pots to get everyting at the right height (keyboard so forearms are roughly horizontal and monitor at eye level). I stand barefoot on a foam camping pad (Ridgerest) folded in half so it is double thickness. Here is a picture of the desk (SFW):
http://i.imgur.com/S16AWp8.jpg
By all means, spend a $1000 on a desk if that is what works for you, your body is important and in the long term $1000 may be worth it. However, you might try a lower cost alternative at least to start out to see how it feels.
One of my vertebrae is damaged from a snowboarding accident. I can't stand up for more than a few minutes. I won't try the standing desk. I'll sit.
no, I don't have a sig
In general, the study trends are pointing to rotating positions periodically. Standing sometimes, sitting others, and shifting positions in general throughout the day. There is no ONE right work position.
How to implement that furniture-wise is another story. I'm envisioning something like a dental chair where the height and position can be controlled via a set of buttons or levers. The desk would be higher up so that one can sit, stand, or do something in-between without having to move the desk (thus simplifying the system).
However, there could be downsides to such:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Table-ized A.I.
Doctor ordered me to go back to a normal desk.
Stacks of the largest programming books from my shelf. It gets interesting when I need one from the bottom of the stack. It's like playing Jenga except you get a broken monitor if you lose.
I personally bought one last year. I look at it this way. I could battle the company to get me one, however, I would probably loose that battle after much grief and anguish. I stop at starbucks every day for a Venti Cappuccino for a bit over $5 CAD without even thinking about it. I spend approximately 2000 hrs at the office per year. I ended up getting a VariDesk Pro (I HIGHLY recommend it) but there are other players in the game too. Landed in the door was $700 CAD. So if I do the math. Thats about 35 cents per hour, or $2.80/per day. One half of my coffee addiction (which probably isnt near as healthy) So why will I spend the money without thinking for a the coffee but flinch at the desk? One of the better purchases I have made. I feel more energetic during the day, and my back doesnt get as sore. So the choice becomes, wait for the Co. to save my life, or take charge of my own health to counteract the coffee/day habit... Plus when I change jobs, I simply take it with me, the way I would take a picture on the wall.
Regular breaks is what you need, not a break where you go check some youtube videos, but a break where you do some exercises. When I worked from home, I had a elliptical in the other room and I aimed to do thousand steps every hour. It took a few minutes, but not long enough to start sweating. Other things I did was just some exercising like push ups, pull ups, squats, sit-ups. Not that many, but enough to get a burning feeling. It just takes a few minutes every hour, and you boost your muscle tone as a nice side effect. I also did some cardio training somewhere during the day. This would depend on how I felt, I planned to do this in the morning but I'm a real night person, so I ended doing it after work. This forced me to stop working on time, and do my 10 hours of work every day, of course 10 hours including all the breaks. I only worked like 6 hours a day, and I was more productive than before when I worked 9 hours straight, afraid of leaving my desk (I can not miss a IM or e-mail!).
So I suggest, first start to take regular breaks, and than start to wonder what desk would be better for your posture. Standing all day is also not ideal, but it feels good when you switch from 20 years of sitting to your first weeks of standing.
Currently I've another job that doesn't allow us to work from home, and where we sit all day for 9 hours straight. After almost a year I am again suffering from old annoyances, like numb legs, lower back pain, pain in my shoulder... sitting all day long is the unwritten rule number one to be productive in this new culture... and it is not good. I even got an injury while exercising in the evening and apparently is was caused by being inactive for too long hours (9 hours office + 2 hours commute by car = 11 hours) followed by sporting too hard.
You just need a taller chair, and you can have it both ways.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
My company provided a sit/stand station that sits on top of my normal desk (varidesk.com, desktop units range from $325 to $400 depending on size). In the low position it puts the keyboard about 1" above my desk, and my monitor maybe 6" above desk level. I had used an adjustable keyboard tray previously, which put my keyboard below the top of my desk, but I could adjust my chair to compensate for the new higher keyboard when sitting. I hold a couple buttons on the side of the unit and lift, and my monitor and keyboard move up and forward. I try to split my time between standing and sitting. Some days I spend a lot of time standing, some days not so much. I mostly go by what I feel like doing that day, but I am trying to make a conscious decision to make sure I meet some minimum amount of standing per day.
Switching positions throughout the day is awesome - for physical and mental health. ... And for the eyes and arms/wrists (RSI) aswell. ... You can do standing excersises and Kung Fu moves at the same time. ... Work on your "Crane Technique" (TM) :-)
Highly recommended. I once worked in an office where everyone had a desk they could electrically lift to standing height. Very cool for quick discussions or standing conding sessions.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, ikea sells 'cheap' motorized desk for about 550 euro's..
But all day standing is also not good for you...
I work from home and have similar concerns to OP. My desk isn't easily adjustable but I set it slightly higher so I can comfortably stand at it or sit.
I walk my kids to school, which is next to a large wooded park. On the way home I wander around and get a few calls out of the way. Early morning conference calls are a joy in bright weather walking around.
Back in my home office I've trained myself to automatically stand up when I get a call that I know will take more than a few minutes. Sometimes I walk around the house and make a drink. The only time I find this problematic is when I need to do a screen share over Lync or whatever.
I don't know that it's made me healthier but I feel better and have kept off the 15kg I lost after Christmas and I suspect this standing up business has helped in some small way.
We recently went through an office move and decided to get new desks. Ikea has motorized stand up desks for roughly $500. Everyone loves them.
Greed is the root of all evil.
I am working at my desk for 10h+ per day. After I started my freelance work in my own office and a longer period of sickness due to back problems, I searched for the same topic. In the end, I got an electric standing-sitting-desk base for around 500 bucks and put a 2,5m tabletop on myself - the prebuilt and "professional" electronic tables were 1k+ for the cheapest and that was too much money back then.
I switch positions a few times a day between sitting, standing and standing/sitting on a bar stool (according to the research I read before buying, it's not the sitting that hurts you most - it's staying in the same position for too long). Also, I now put 3 small water bottles with magnesium on the table and try to drink them over my workday - helps concentration and creeping dehydration and forces you to move due to natural urges.
Also, I've just bought a new office chair due to my height, because the previous one simply did not support my neck in any way. With the new one, I also have a nice headrest and can really switch between relaxation through sitting and muscle activation through standing.
However, buying fancy furniture does not help by itself. You also need to do some sort of sport to train your muscles (preferably a team sport, because of the naturally diversified activation of muscles throughout your body) and you should do some reading on ergonomic desk setup. At one of my previous employers, I was sick for a few weeks due to a wrong combination of desk height and monitor arrangement. That lead to a wrong positioning of my neck, which in turn resulted in an inflamed nerve center - not nice.
TLDR: Do yourself a favor and get a matching chair and electric table matched on your height and weight, check your desk setup and remember to get into some sport-routine.
This is the best, i have a monitor mount on the back of it so i can have my 4 monitors and it works great. You need some upper body strength to lift the varidesk with that many monitors but its not too bad. Its the best option to easily have a stand/sit desk at any desk.
I just use the desk I have. Whenever I need to stand I just put my monitor on one box and my keyboard and mouse on another box. I have a tall box for my monitor (so that it's at eye level) and a short, wide box for my keyboard and mouse (so they're about hip level).
For intervals I usually have a chime on my watch as a cue to stand. Then I stand for 15 minites (or longer, if I'm feeling like a champion) and sit down again until the next chime.
Under desk stepper for 50 bucks...
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016BUR7I?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage
Why go to that expense? I went to the local home cheapo store and bought 4 8"x8" concrete blocks for $1 each. Lift your current desk up on the blocks. I've been this way for two years now and it's made a huge difference in sciatica pain but it also improves my concentration when I'm working. Can't really let my mind drift or I'll fall over. :)
here is a cure for the desire to use a treadmill desk:
1. get a treadmill desk of any variety.
2. set up your computer as you like.
3. get to work.
4. wait until you are concentrating on an email or a task and make a misstep.
5. fall ungracefully.
Note #1: do not forget to flail on the way down to make sure you get your coffee or soda all over you and your computer
Note #2: do not forget to whack your skull on your desk or other furniture on the way down.
optional: if you fortunately have installed a backstop to the treadmill and have forgotten to attach the little string for autostop on the treadmill, you can also enjoy the benefits of the treadmill belt sandpapering your flesh and your clothes while you struggle to get off of it.
voila! you are now cured from *ever* wanting to use a treadmill desk again!
I used to work standing for 12 hours a day. Let me tell you, however bad sitting is for you, standing all day is even worse.
There seems to be a lot of people in my office switching recently and I decided to give it a try about 2 weeks ago. I decided to avoid the heavy cost to my department (and possibly being required to get a Doctor note for a standing desk) and just try it out DIY style. Total cost $30. I didn't leave myself with the option to sit as I figured I would just get lazy if I did.
I went online and bought a used coffee table (Ikea Lack) for $15. (The magazine shelf is very useful for documents). Then I ordered a $15, 2'x3' floor mat. I am 5'10" and it seems to work out nicely for my height. My only complaint is the coffee table has a 90 degree edge that can dig into my forearms after a while.
My feet are getting used to it and I find I shift around a lot just because standing in one position too long starts to hurt after a while. All in all I think it was a good move and I plan to stick with it.
First - there's no reason you have to spend two grand. I went to Home Depot and spent a total of $5.99 for a 12x36 painted shelf board. When I want to stand, I put that on top of a box on my desk, and put my mouse and keyboard on that. Advantage: not only is it cheap, but your setup is portable to any desk that has a monitor arm.
Second - and this is the really important bit - be careful to stand correctly and don't stand too much in the beginning. Build up to it.
What can go wrong? I have personally experienced these two -
1. Don't stand on an uneven surface (like, the padding under the carpet has separated). Less that a half an inch can give you sciatica, which is horrible.
2. DON'T LOCK YOUR KNEES. If you feel yourself getting tired, sit down. You need to keep a micro-bend in your knees, otherwise it's a small but significant hyperextention, which will lead to pain.
Starting out, a kitchen timer might help. Sit for a while, stand for a while. Good luck.
It works really well. I got one for home, and my work purchased one for me as well. I LOVE IT!!!!!!
The problem is not sitting or standing, the problem is being in one position for a long time. I usually "Work" around 16 hours a day. 8 hours for the job, and 8 hours for fun. A combination of sitting and standing at various times is a MUST.
Scott Carr
Lots of my coworkers at Salesforce.com use standing desks. One example that comes to mind is someone who's had long term back problems. It's made a massive difference for him. Most people here can get them with manager approval and many could get them anyway.
* $500 electric desks are out there, you just have to look for them. IKEA has one now -> http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...
* Mixing standing and sitting is good. Moving around is better.
* Your legs will not appreciate standing to begin with.
* Standing will not magically fix poor posture: talk with your chiropractor or better yet take up Yoga.
* Standing will not magically fix an ergonomically unsound workspace setup:
** Make sure that your monitors are the correct height - mid-screen at or slightly below eye level - keeping the head, neck and eyes in a neutral position.
** Note that the appropriate monitor height will change when standing.
** When typing and mousing your shoulders should be relaxed not hunched, wrists should be straight or angled slightly down but never bent back.
* Give your eye muscles a break by regularly looking away from the screen and gazing into the distance.
I use the varidesk, which is height-adjustable, and also have the muvman chair(also adjustable) which allows for sitting while still kinda standing. Very happy with both.
About a year ago another developer and I convinced our company to buy us "Stylus" 1,800 x 900mm standing desks. These are electric height adjustable desks with a 650 - 1,300mm range.
I found I started getting sore feet after a few days, so I also bought myself a gel floor mat (you see them on eBay and the like as "kitchen mats").
When I was sitting I had a tendency to drift in the afternoons, practically fighting off sleep some days. I find standing helps me to concentrate on the task. Occasionally I'll lower the desk to sit for a while, but usually only after a weekend of hard labour (digging out gardens, loading trailers, etc.).
Bonus 1: Standing on a gel floor mat means less time wearing shoes. My feet are thanking me for it.
Bonus 2: I'm more easily able to escape the area if I hear someone coming to ask me a question! :)
Buying advice: Don't buy sight unseen. We literally tried dozens of standing desk models until we found one that could get high enough (a lot seem to top out at around 1,050mm for some reason) and wasn't likely to topple over with our array of monitors across the back.
As an architect-turned-programmer, I have a standing desk at home. I sit on a drafting stool, which has a back rest. It's really just a tall version of an office chair. Plus it has a foot rail. I just replaced my drafting table with a desk i made out of a door and pipes all from the home depot. It took me a day and $200. I coated the surface with a craft art board cover. The height is just below my elbows. Under the desk is a foot rail just like under a bar. It let's me position myself in all kinds of ways. Change is good. Sometimes I stand properly ;) I sit roughly half or 2/3 of the day. I don't use wheels. I use large furniture sliders. They're easy to use and less damaging to the carpet. I think my setup is perfect. A few friends have adjustable standing desks. But I just don't like them as much as mine. It's just so much easier for me to change positions. And I do that frequently.
http://www.designertrapped.com/2014/08/diy-pipe-table-tutorial.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BX4GEK
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HF2L28
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001W6Q4W4
I use a standing desk extensively. My first one was a treadmill augmented with stuff to hold monitor and laptop. That one worked just fine as a standing desk except it wasn't convertible to normal.
In short, just not practical to walk while you type. You can read that way, and slowly do mouse clicking, but typing simply isn't practical. No matter how slow you go.
Get or make one that can be easily and quickly switched between standing and sitting. Then just gradually work your way up to several hours a day standing. Don't try to go straight from sitting all day to standing all day. Won't work. Work your way up to it.
I am in the midst of building my treadmill/standing desk workspace now. I work at home, so have lots of leeway, but a few of the ideas I have come up with might be worth contemplating, if a bit expensive. I am trying to remove as many of the impediments to my using this as possible. Just standing all day or walking all day leads to pain and suffering, just as much as sitting all day does. The idea is to mix it up. The solution I have come with is to combine a treadmill desk with a standing chair, on a raised platform level with the treadmill.
I have a Lifespan TR1200DT treadmill (http://www.lifespanfitness.com/tr1200-dt3-under-desk-treadmill ), the 'best' option available right now...you can get two TR1200's for the price if you are thinking of getting the TR5000. There is a new brand of treadmills coming out from iMovR soon that will be designed from the ground up for under desk walking assuming the quality pans out.( http://www.imovr.com/imovr-the... )
I also have a Focal Locus leaning/standing seat chair as well.( http://www.focaluprightfurnitu... ) This will help relief some of the pressure from standing or walking all day, without the same downsides of sitting.
I am still working on a desk, though the iMovr ThermoDesk ( www.imovr.com/omega-everest-electric-sit-stand-walk-desk-with-embedded-ergo-tilt-keyboard-tray-48-tabletop.html ) is the one I am leaning towards. I am still figuring out the keyboard tray aspect given my personal preferences.
What ties it all together is a custom raised floor around the treadmill (2x4's, plywood and some nice hardwood looking vinyl flooring for a couple of hundred bucks). This allows me to easily wheel the Focal Locus on top of the treadmill or off to the side on the raised floor without lifting or strain, and quickly in seconds. The wheels of the Locus sit on the side rails, while the rear T which is rubber sits on the plenty sturdy enough treadmill belt. You could also have a semi-hard but light foam board cut to size to drop over the belt if you were worried about damage/wear.
Beyond that I am working on using 'light' voice recognition, additional mouse input options (handheld adesso easycat for when I am just browsing around...I'm disappointed with the wireless offerings being so large or requiring 2 finger scrolling) , x-keys buttons, etc. to help reduce the sheer volume of buttons and clicks I press each day, hopefully by 20-40%.
Hopefully someone else's lightbulb goes on from this idea.
http://blog.slaingod.com
I'm 62. It doesn't work for me to stand all day. I start to have fatigue from standing. So, I mix it up and that works very well for me. I also run five to six days a week. So, I feel like I'm doing the best I can do to avid being too sedentary.
Lower back pain can be alleviated with a simple exercise. It requires a very solid brick wall. Do not use dry wall, it is much too flimsy. Without using a chair, lean your back against the wall as if you are seated in an imaginary chair. Your knees must be bent at a right angle. Briefly press against the wall with your lower back, for say 15 seconds. Repeat once or twice. Voila! Your pain will be gone. By the way, I heard this trick from a Phoenix wireless personality who has the same first name as Romo's cat. D-Backs Rule!
it's difficult to roll an office chair through rail bedding.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I made myself a standing treadmill desk for my faculty job, and generally liked it. I got a normal treadmill from Craigslist and a desk from IKEA. I tended to walk a good deal when I had typing to do and the work did not require a full mental effort. I could never get writing to go easily while walking, and there was something about the walking process on the treadmill that required some of my CPU cycles (in contrast to regular walking outside, which does not). So: marking papers using MS Word - yes, marking papers with pen - no, thinking hard about a research problem - no.
I tended to walk about 1-4 miles a day, depending on the type of work I had to do, and how much of it was in the office vs. lab vs. lecture room.
The main drawback with a cheap, regular (not designed for office use), used treadmill was the noise. It was pretty loud. I put some rubber mats under the base to deaden the noise a bit, which was sufficient for my downstairs neighbor, but it was still too loud for me next-door neighbor. That would be the main driver to get a "real" office walking treadmill, which are quieter, and are optimized for walking, not running speeds.
Pic here.
I don't see how this is helpful. It will have its share of problems, for instance varicose veins. It's not like keeping a straight-up posture is anything more "natural" than having your ass sit all day long.
Well, I haven't been diagnosed thusly, but there's something related going on. I find sitting still uncomfortable (though I have no problems on focusing per se), and I've realized the point of standing desks is that you can move around a little all the time. Or actually you have to, in order to stay comfortable. If you're one of these people who need to walk around when making a speech or thinking about a problem, you'll love a standing desk. I think I might actually go back to office work now that I realize it's possible to do that without sitting all day. (I've also been a teacher for a few years, and I loved the aspect of not sitting down while doing something relatively geeky -- I actually found my leg muscles getting stronger.)
After hearing a lot about standing desks from friends (and being generally interested about ergonomics, with my Stokke chair for example), I started hacking together one about 2 years ago. I now simply have a coffee table on top of a desk -- I think the monitor could be a little higher, but for keyboarding the height is perfect, with my forearms pretty much horizontal. It took a couple of months to really get used to, and it helps to have some temporary solutions; I still have another sitting desk for paperwork such as math.
(Speaking of keyboards, I've always preferred playing one standing up. It's much better for getting in the mood in live shows, but it also helps my playing when I can move around to the music. So the other standing keyboard is just a logical continuation.)
As per treadmills and exercise bikes, I already made the point of naturally moving around. Frankly, I've never understood either of them in any setting, but it probably depends on where you live. I walk everywhere within my roughly 2-km radius of daily life, and I much prefer doing it in fresh air anyway.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
whomever put the cables in my desk tied them all down way too short, and I'm too lazy to fix it. Corporate just did a re-model, and all the desk in our new Enterprise Command Center are all "stand-able". Corporate apparently sank millions into remodeling the old SABRE building, we're all thinking we're being setup for another "sale" once the HP Enterprise company is spun off. Luckily for us the mainframes can't really move overseas, and the real-time systems require constant watching by people in the same building!
I have a motorized sit/stand desk, and I love it. I switch off between sitting and standing about every 30-60 minutes, with longer periods of standing in the morning and longer periods of sitting in the afternoon as I get tired. Among other benefits, my back is less sore at the end of the day.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
It'd have to be a group decision where I work. I sit right in the middle of an open working space, with about 16 dev tables/desks. If I was to adopt a standing desk and stand up, it would likely bother others sitting across or next to me, as if I was always looking down on their desks.
Getting 16 developers to agree to that may be a tall order (pun intended)...
I don't know what it is, but my productivity leaped when I got a standing desk.
Now I send out dozens of slashdot comments a day!
But I kid.
Really. Much more productive doing actual work.
Anytime I need to do real thinking, I've historically gotten the urge to walk around. Much like the Sundance Kid, "I'm better when I move." Or that's what I thought. Now I think maybe standing with minimal movement is enough.
back in, iirc, the 1980s, the chairman of Citibank, J Reed, 6'4", had a standup desk for his bad back.....
why are we constantly re inventing the wheel ?
Relevant: http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-...
I've been working with computers since 1961. I've had decades of back problems. Standing is not the answer. Get up and walk around - frequently. If you can stand it walk several miles a day. I just had a 50th college reunion and I think I'm better off than many of my classmates because of walking and exercises. Start now.
In the olden days we called them bars..
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At one location I have a standing desk with a raised chair. There are also a few treadmill desks for anyone to use. At another location I have a regular desk with a comfortable chair.
The chair at my standing desk is not especially comfortable. I sit for a while then stand for a while. I do not pay attention to the time, but I assume that I switch 2-3 times an hour. I assume switching back and forth is beneficial but it feels like fidgeting. The maximum height for the desk is about 2 inches too short for me and I have not found a good solution yet. The floor is carpeted but not specially padded for standing. Sometimes my knees hurt a little at the end of the day. I have no foot rest for the raised chair but I think it would help.
I like the treadmill desks for reading but not as much for sustained typing. I just use my laptop at the treadmill desk instead of external monitors. I like it for about an hour but would not choose it for all day use. I like the steady pacing better than just standing at a desk but I cannot sustain it as long. Having a chair at these treadmill desks would not work, but I think I would like switching between sitting and pacing best.
With the comfortable (Embody) chair I can sit all day without discomfort or fidgeting. I feel like I can get so deeply into a coding state that I forget about my body. This is also at a much less distracting location. I feel like the fidgeting and standing is healthier, but I like losing myself in work sometimes.
If you have the option, mix it up. Variety is the spice of life.
I tried a standing test for about 18 months. Got plantar fasciitis from it. Now it hurts to stand and walk :(
I only program whilst having an orgy with multiple Norwegian supermodels
A long time ago I worked in a place where, when it was busy, the only keypunch that was available was one you needed to stand up at. The error rate when I used it was horrendously higher, and even so the entry speed was a lot slower.
Everyone avoided using it if they had any alternative.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I work from home a few days a week, and I've now had a standing workstation at home for about 2 months. I really can't justify (or afford) the cost of a commercial, height-adjustable rig, and they don't look substantial enough for me. I'm in my late forties, so after 2 and a half decades of sitting work, resulting in frequent, though minor, back pain at the end of the day, and particularly after the 1+hour commute to/from the office, so I thought I ought to try standing, and see if it helped. I certainly didn't want to invest £1,000 to just to try it out...
I had an old wooden computer desk in the garage, gathering dust, so I basically cut the legs down so can sit atop my normal work table, braced with some spare planks and G cramps. The work top is at my elbow height, and it's wide enough to accommodate two 24" LCD's. It's ugly and hackish, but functional and stable. I didn't buy any materials specifically for it, though - I just used wood and screws I had on hand.
So far, I've found that my back pain is far better, and I feel more flexible. The first week was less comfortable, as I obviously wasn't used to so much standing - I requisitioned one of the bar stools from the kitchen breakfast bar so I can sit or lean if I want to, but I'm doing that less and less these days. I'm now finding that the days in the office, where I have a standard, sitting workstation, are getting to be less and less comfortable.
I got some cheap pine from Lowe's and attached it to an old desk surface I had in the garage with clunky cross braces cut from the same pine. I basically just made a long rectangle for each leg and screwed them to the surface. I propped it up on old yearbooks when I realized it was a little short. It's a little ghetto, but it works. Monitors are cheap these days; $150 will get you a decent 24" screen.
I have a home gym with a treadmill as well and made a desktop for it for under $40. I followed these directions, basically: http://www.dowerchin.com/2012/01/23/diy-treadmill-desk-under-50-no-tools-required/
I have an old PC hooked up to a 50" LCD in the home gym. You could just stick a laptop on the tread-desk if you wanted, or just read a book while you walk/jog/run on it. I have a keyboard and mouse that I can use fine at 1-2mph, but over that and I just watch video because typing and mousing gets a little difficult.
On a typical day, I'll switch on and off between the standing and sitting desks every hour or so, and hit the treadmill once or twice during the day for like an hour or two. I really should use the treadmill more.
... when you peel it from my cold, dead cheeks.
I've ended up having the desk at my office being a sitting desk, and my home desk being a standing one. My standing desk is the pile of to-be-used reams of printer paper I made on my desk (I lucked out in that my comfortable height happened to be around an integer multiple of reams + my desks height) Seems to be working for me.
I've had my Varidesk Pro Plus 36" ( http://www.varidesk.com/ ) for about a month and I love it. They are relatively cheap, ~$350, easily adjustable, and I even got the boss the pay for it.
I've been sitting in front of a computer for a living for about 25 years now and definitely have my share of back issues. So far, I've worked up to alternating standing and sitting for 30 minutes at a time, although I sometimes get tired by about 3pm. Overall, the Varidesk is a great improvement over sitting all day, and I've not personally found any problems working/coding from a standing position.
- Necron69
I work from home and use a standing desk. I just bought an inexpensive (very) Lack table from Ikea and plopped it on my bench table. It's great. I can put my laptop on it and alternate between sitting and standing. Very nice. If it's too high you can lop off the legs or mount an inexpensive shelf (with brackets, all from Ikea) for a keyboard on the front legs. No excuse not to do it--at all. The posts claiming the problem is not sitting are just caviling. The original study reports that the problem IS sitting for long periods.
I would work at McDonalds.
Early in my career, I spent a lot of time walking around between sites, doing desktop support. Then my job became more sedentary, and I started throwing out my back. I switched to a walking workstation (took a lot of DIY and convincing before I got to my optimal setup), and it's great.
There are cheaper options - one treadmill that comes highly recommended for walking workstations and is the one I use is the Confidence Pro Plus (about $200 on Amazon). When I set up my workstation, my office was worried about sound, etc, so I wanted an option that was cheap enough that if they decided I couldn't use it, I would be willing to eat the cost since I won't use a treadmill at home. This treadmill holds up well if all you are doing is walking, and I've had mine now for three years with 0 problems with it. You can remove the arms and slide it easily under pretty much any desk, so when I first started using it I had a regular desk and just piled boxes on top to raise my monitor and keyboard to standing height (not the best scenario, but it worked).
Another person in our office went the other route and bought a used gym-quality treadmill and built her own desk for it. She had to have a moving company deliver it while mine came in the mail. She also can't lower her desk and choose to sit for a while, so she has to have a separate desk and a laptop so she can sit sometimes. It works for her, but those were downsides for me. She also had to get sound-dampening mats to go under her treadmill while I didn't.
My desk raises and lowers with a motor and was about $600, which my office did eventually pay for, but only after everyone else in my office saw me using my walking workstation and wanted to at least be able to stand. I regularly have people in the organization coming over to check out my setup, and it's spreading - one coworker came by to check it out because she has rheumatoid arthritis at a young age, and sitting all day makes her stiff. She did the same setup that I have, and she loves it. A number of others have also gotten the same setup. So far, no one who has tried it has been disappointed.
I slowly worked up from walking at about 1 MPH to now I can comfortably walk at 2 MPH. I don't think I'll go any faster than that - that seems to be my limit for getting work done.
It's been totally worth it. My back is in much better shape and I feel more awake in the afternoons when I walk. I can sit when I want by just moving the treadmill out of the way and lowering my desk. The only downside is now I am having trouble maintaining my weight - I keep losing it.
Preachers have done it for a couple thousand years. It is called a pulpit.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I now stand up while surfing the Internet all day at home.
I an retired.
I stand up, because about a year ago I started to spontaneously bleed and found it very painful sitting down.
It was a pressure sore.
A lump developed under the skin as well as the bleeding.
I now stand at a computer desk with the laptop on top of my HP printer.
A bit high, and my bandaged feet are sore after 8 hours (don't ask), but better than the worry of GANGRENE.
It also puts an edge to your decisions, sitting down is more relaxing (unless you develop pressure sores), so you might be inclined to ignore problems you come across, or let insults go by.
Standing up to speak on a telephone, or now as it seems, muck about on the computer, leads to more alert mind that can respond to situations that you might make a wrong decision for, that you later regret.
I use a VariDesk Pro48 and a standing mat, which my company was kind enough to spring for when I asked; the desk itself was ~$400 (Yea, I just plugged my company; they were kind enough to drop the change for a standing desk, mat, ergo chair and sitting ball simply because I asked; they've earned a plug or two). It is big enough to hold my laptop, two external monitors and a keyboard and mouse nicely.
I tend to adjust from standing to sitting 3-4 times a day. I get tired of sitting, so I stand up. I get tired of standing, so I sit down. The desk makes it really easy; it has a couple of latches on the underside that you pull up on to unlock travel, and then you adjust the desk to the height you want, and then let go of the handles. It's spring loaded so the weight on top is basically neutralized. I love the thing.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
I have always pushed my monitor as far away from my face as possible, so that I can rest my entire forearms flat on the desk (not just the wrists or elbows), to write, code, or mouse.
Also, I only use low-profile mice, meaning that my wrists are always resting on the desk's surface, not bridged to accommodate a high-backed mouse. This allows mousing by motion of the fingers alone. Track-pads are even better. Our wrists provide range of rotation and bending — they are not good for fine-motor control actions. Our fingers are for fine-motor dexterity actions, such as mousing: Mouse with your hand & fingers, not your wrists!
These two modifications have saved me from any discomforting symptoms after three decades of spending both work and free time in front of computers.
The rub is this approach is this:
* Back muscles need-not support the arms to mouse or type.
* Fore-arm muscles need not be used to mouse or type.
* With a laptop track-pad, you can do everything without ever lifting your wrists from rest on a surface.
The Result: No gorilla arm.
Tried it, my knees are now shot.
I have been using "standing desk" for at least 10 years. Without any problems. My company is also producing various kinds and designs with adjustable height. Here is the link http://www.opus.si/. If anybody is interested, please let me know. ;.))
I have a VersaTable which allows for sit/stand and an easy transition between the two. I also bought anti fatigue mats at the same time so I'm not standing on the hard wood floor. I have never been so happy with a decision. It took a few adjustments to find my happy standing position. I almost never sit anymore. My chiropractor would confirm that he can tell the difference (a change for the better).
Like the post above mine I have a large mouse pad and sit much of my forearm on the desk. I have a secondary monitor at the back of the desk (I got the 30" wide desk). I absolutely love it. I'll even game for hours standing. There's no question that it's better than sitting. I've had mine for about 8 months.
I refuse to sign
I have one at work. It is an adjustable one that can be raised or lowered with a hand crank. At first I was super impressed that my new office would have all adjustable height desks, but then i realized how crappy the crank is. It takes 2-4 minutes to go from standing to sitting and 3-5 the other way, and since it is a hand crank, you cant do much else while doing it. So, essentially i have a standing only desk and when my feet are tired I un-dock my laptop and sit under my desk. TL:DR= Standing is good, cranking is bad.
I got a geekdesk ( http://www.geekdesk.com/geekdesk-v3-frame-only ) about seven years ago for $635 plus shipping and it is going strong. This may be the lesser model; not sure. Some of the best money I ever spent and I still remember struggling with the decision. I stand all day some days and sit early on others. Wouldn't go back to sitting all day for any amount of money.
I had a bad back from sitting all day, so I tried standing. I developed nerve compression issues in my feet. I had RSI in my right wrist from using my mouse all day, so switched to my left wrist, and the RSI spread there. The reality is that the human body is not designed to do the same thing all day every day.