The contemporary work zeitgeist has spoken: if you’re sitting down while working, you’re dying. If you stand, you’re more productive. Standing while working has a faddy appeal to the point that it’s no longer uncommon to see people standing throughout their workday. Behold, the standing desk is here to stay.
There’s a historical precedent for working from a standing desk. This particular mode of workspace was popular among a number of figures now revered, such as Churchill, da Vinci, and Ernest Hemingway. If it worked for them, surely it could work for you, right?
The standing desk is nothing more than a workspace that’s elevated markedly higher than a conventional desk. The user forgoes a chair and works while standing. That’s all there is to it.
If you are intrigued by this setup and want to shake up the way you get work done, you can go right out and buy a proper standing desk (there are loads of options on Amazon, naturally), but you should start by turning your existing workplace into a standing desk. Just rest your laptop or monitor on a stack of books at the appropriate height so you can see what it’s like. It will literally change your perspective, and perhaps your worklife will follow. If you want to commit to a standing desk after a little experimentation, then go for it.
The whole idea here is that sitting idly introduces a host of health problems to workers. Things like heart disease and diabetes can more firmly take hold when someone isn’t moving around enough and getting proper exercise. As the working public has a significant population who fill in to cubicles every day, sit in chairs for 8-10 hours, and then go home.
If you want a way to get some more activity into your workday, you might trying marrying a standing desk with a treadmill, which will run at slow speeds while you “walk” in place, working away. Science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson swears by using these, and he’s been using one for years to write all order of fiction and non-fiction.
Here’s the takeaway: ditching your chair at work can have health and productivity benefits. Do a little reading on standing desks and their popularity, experiment with a makeshift version, and if you’re hooked, you can spring for one yourself.
