My first week at a standing desk coincided with my Internet Vacation, so I wasn’t able to report on how it went last week. Overall, I think it went well, but it was tough. I got into the office last Monday, having completely forgotten that I’d converted to a standing desk. Indeed, each morning I walked into my office was a new reminder of what I was doing. (Somehow, it seemed to be the last think on my mind each morning.)
By 10:30 am on that first Monday, my feet were already feeling the strain. By Friday, I think I’d mostly grown accustomed to it, but that is not to say that it still wasn’t painful standing all day long. Actually, I didn’t stand all day long on most days. At some point during each day, I’d attend a meeting, where I would, of course, sit. I made sure to sit at lunchtime as well. And sometimes, when I had some reading to do, I’d do it sitting at my meeting table instead of leaning on the keyboard rest attached to my standing desk.
I did find myself leaning quite a bit that first week.
I also found myself swaying after a while. I couldn’t seem to stand perfectly still and work. I would eventually start to sway from side-to-side, building up some kind of rhythm.
But I will say this: I felt a lot more productive last week than in recent memory. Part of this is because I was away from the Internet. But I also found that when I stood at my desk instead of sitting, there was more of an urgency to the task at hand. I felt like I needed to get it done and move on to the next one so that eventually, I could take a seat. This was an expected (but welcome) form of motivation.
And so, the standing desk at work will continue into its second week. I’m told that it gets better over time. I’m interested to look at some physical metrics. Does my FitBit pedometer pick up more steps because I am at a standing desk. When I have the time to pull this data together, I’ll do a comparison and see how things look. In the meantime, I worked from home on Monday this week and I’ll be the first to admit it was nice to have a chance to sit for most of the day.
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Hey Jamie,
Nice to see your giving a standing desk a try! One thing I would recommend having looked at your desk setup is implementing some sort of foot rest, like you see along the bottom of bars. Being able to raise one foot up a bit can help change up your stance and keep you from locking your legs. Also, a tall stool is a good idea so you can occasionally perch.
I’m going to share your post on our site so readers can learn from your experience.
Hang in there!
Chris
I’ve blundered in from Google and I’ve been enjoying all your posts about data capture and Evernote. Thank you for sharing!
One follow-up question for this post: did ou find that the Fitbit registered a difference in activity level with the standing desk? I’m curious if it gave “credit” for that, so to speak.