A Year of Mixing It Up

A headline at Hacker News, "How Is Your Standing Desk Working for You?" has reminded me that I've been using a standing desk in my home office for a little over a year. At the end of a product review for the newly-assembled desk, I gave my initial impression:

As for standing while writing? It's okay. So far, my ankles like it about as much as my posterior likes sitting, but I am just starting the experiment.

That has held up, and throughout this time, I have used my standing desk much like others in the thread who alternate between sitting and standing, and probably most closely to one person who threw in reclining. I don't recline, but do I have a reading chair in my office, which affords a third working position. Throughout the day, I find that I alternate among:

• Sitting to work on my desktop at my original desk, a roll-top;
• Standing to work with my laptop on the standing desk, which is right behind where I sit for the desktop; and
• Sitting in my reading chair to read or work with the laptop.

I've outfitted both computers with the same software (with one exception) and use Dropbox for active projects, so switching is painless. (The exception is that only the desktop has VMWare, which means that if I have to "do Windows," I have to sit -- or kneel, when that gets uncomfortable -- but I very rarely have to use anything like Word long enough that I need to change anything.) I am satisfied overall with switching around, and it fits well with the twenty-five minutes of work/five minutes of rest routine I typically use.

Probably the biggest drawback is space. Should we move, I may have to get rid of a desk, but I think a stool alongside the standing desk would likely work for that, based on how I work when I go to a Starbucks with bar stools.

-- CAV