{"id":291,"date":"2012-02-02T15:47:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T20:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=291"},"modified":"2019-12-01T14:44:25","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T22:44:25","slug":"standing-room-mostly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=291","title":{"rendered":"Standing room mostly"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve transitioned to a standing desk.<\/p>\n

I started thinking about it a year or so ago, after reading about the benefits of standing rather than sitting for desk work. Those benefits include (for a lot of people) increased energy, diminished back pain, weight loss, and–most interesting to me–improved focus and concentration.<\/p>\n

I don’t have any back pain, but the other stuff sounded pretty good.<\/p>\n

For a long time I pined for the\u00a0GeekDesk<\/a>, a hydaulic beauty that lets you raise and lower the work surface in seconds with the push of a button. (The ability to alternate easily between standing and sitting seems to help the transition to a standing desk, and even many long-time standers say it’s good to take a sitting break from time to time.)<\/p>\n

But the GeekDesk is pricey, especially when you add the cost of shipping. I could never quite justify it, so I dithered and did nothing. Meanwhile, the awesome\u00a0Cat Rambo<\/a> did the opposite, i.e., something. She rigged up a standing desk and started using it. Her FB and G+ posts about the results inspired me, and when she posted that the IKEA Frederik desk can be used or modded as a standing desk, I went out and got one. At $149 it’s hella cheaper than the GeekDesk, although it can’t be raised and lowered, and I did the shipping myself.<\/p>\n

I’ll pass lightly over the assembly process, except to say that: (1) this desk is the first IKEA product I’ve ever assembled that did not come with an Allen wrench, and (2) I put the desk together in our living room, while enduring the godawful Syfy movie “Swamp Volcano,” and getting it into my office eventually involved taking a door off its hinges and, when that proved inadequate, taking the damn desk partly apart and reassembling it\u00a0in<\/em> the office. So, um, put the thing together in the room where you plan to use it. Duh.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I got it set up last night. My old sitting desk is on the left, the new standing one on the right:<\/p>\n

\"newdesk1\"
\n\"olddesk2\"<\/p>\n

My work habits are pretty jumpy; I usually take frequent bathroom, TV, walk, play-with-cat breaks, so it’s not like I’m going to be standing for hours on end in one place, like some literary-assembly-line worker. (Although my publisher might find that an \u00a0improvement.) But for sitting breaks at my desk, I got a $20 IKEA bar stool with a padded footrest. I’m also going to take Cat’s advice and get a gel floormat, like the ones chefs use.<\/p>\n

I’ve only been at the desk for a couple of hours, but I like it. I’ve gotten some work done: revising an outline for my nonfic publisher, revising a short story, and writing this blog post. Time to down tools and see what that cat’s up to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve transitioned to a standing desk. I started thinking about it a year or so ago, after reading about the benefits of standing rather than sitting for desk work. Those benefits include (for a lot of people) increased energy, diminished back pain, weight loss, and–most interesting to me–improved focus and concentration. I don’t have any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4],"tags":[52,40],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-standing-desk","category-writing","tag-standing-desk","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}