Journal
Note #149: I’m still standing (2024.3.31)
I’ll start out my post by saying “Happy Easter!” This is not a post about Easter, though. Instead, it is a follow-up to my previous post about my new standing desk. I’ve been using it for over a month now, so I thought it was time to post a short update. I guess I’ll start out by saying that I have been using it regularly, and I generally spend half of my day or more standing up—at least on days when I don’t have class. Particularly on Tuesdays, when I have my graduate seminar in the morning, my schedule gets a little messed up. Otherwise, though, I’ve been pretty diligent about using the desk in its standing position. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to it that it feels weird not to have it when I am home on the weekends.
On to the details. This update was inspired by a friend of mine who wrote recently to remind me that it was important not to simply stand ramrod-straight but to fidget while standing. This was actually one of the first things I noticed when I started using the desk—namely, that I never stood still. I was always shifting my weight from one foot to the other, leaning forward, leaning back, even doing light exercises while standing there. I’ve been paying attention to what I do when I sit, and I don’t really sit still, either. I toss and turn when I sleep as well. The truth is, I’ve always been a fidgeter; I just find it really difficult to stay completely still. I guess this is a good thing after all, but for some reason we tell our children not to fidget, to sit still, etc., so I’ve had it pounded into me that fidgeting is a bad thing. Maybe we should stop telling children this.
Something else I’ve noticed is that, since I started using the desk, I have had a grand total of one headache—and I think that one was because I slept wrong because after I got up and did my exercises it went away. Now, it’s hard to say how much of this is due to the standing desk (and particularly to the fact that my monitor is now at eye level, so I hold my head up and instead of bending my neck); there could be other factors involved. Around the same time I got the desk I made another lifestyle change (which I may or may not talk about in the future) that might also be having an influence. I’ve also been very diligent in doing my morning exercises. So who knows. All I know is my new set-up is at the very least not bad for my neck.
On the flip side, there were a couple of practical concerns with the desk. For one, because my desk is originally set up for me to sit at it, it can be awkward to figure out where to put my chair when I am standing. There’s not enough room between the desk and the bookcase behind me to simply push the chair back, and it is a bit of a faff to push the chair off to the side, as it makes it more difficult to get out from behind my desk. This is a fairly minor thing, though, and by this point I’ve pretty much gotten used to it.
The other practical concern is the reduction in actual desk space. Because the desk sits on top of my existing desk, it naturally does not provide as much space as I had beforehand, especially when I am standing up. I suppose I could partially remedy this issue by cleaning off the rest of my desk, but that space would still be a little inconvenient to use while sitting down and impossible to use when standing up. I can put books down on the space in front of the monitor, and I can have papers off to the side as well, but anything much larger than an A4 sheet of paper doesn’t really fit. For example, last week I had to grade qualifying exams, and the exam papers for this are much larger than A4 . So what did I do? Well, as you might be able to see in the pictures from the previous post, I have a large table right in front of my desk where I usually sit down with students. I just took the exam papers to the table and graded them there. Problem solved.
So, while there have been some adjustments to make, the inconveniences have been minor and I have quickly gotten used to them or figured out ways around them. The positives are hard to measure quantitatively, but just speaking from how I’ve been feeling, I think it’s been good for me. This is probably the best bit of kit I’ve gotten for my office yet, and I’m glad I thought of it.