Today’s podcast is really just to plant a possible thought seed in your consciousness if you are not already doing something similar to what I’m about to talk about. If you do desk work a lot, like I do, you may find yourself sitting for long periods at a time. After long periods of desk work between my photography tours, apart from our regular walks and my visits to the archery range, I tend to sit at my desk most of the day. When I go on my first tour in a while, and stand up for most of the day, for the first few days, I get a slightly sore back, and I am reminded that sitting too much will do that to me.

So, a few weeks ago, I went to a local furniture store, and ordered a desk with a handle on it, that I can use to adjust the height, from a comfortable sitting position to a very comfortable standing position. I’m standing right now as I write the manuscript for this post. I have been working like this for a week or so, and have gotten into a routine of cranking my desk up to standing height for at least half of my working day, and I love it!

Until now, even when doing accounts, I would be up and down, going to the scanner, sitting down and entering the details of an expense, then up again to put the scanned receipt in a box and scan the next document to enter. Now, I’m already up, so spinning around to the scanner is easy, as when making music. I can simply walk a few steps to my right to my keyboard and synthesizers, which are also pretty much at standing height, so it’s a very comfortable way to work.

I shot a few images to share what I have done, and first, here is my old desk, with a 3D printer sitting on it, that pretty much now is its only use, but I’m also making use of the space below the desk to house my NAS, UPS, or Uninterrupted Power Supply, networking stuff and my stash of filaments for the 3D printer.

This is also better for the printer, as I had it on a folding table until now, and it rocked around while printing, which can’t of helped with the print quality.

Here now, is my new desk in the sitting position. I have no power on the side of the room you see here, so I ran a few extension cables and a network cable across the door to my storeroom and bundled them together in some black plastic sheeting to keep them somewhat tidy. It was actually a good opportunity to simply clean up my room, as it has gotten quite cluttered over the last few months. Definitely not good from a Feng Shui perspective.

Here now is my desk at standing height. I don’t have to adjust the monitors or lamps, or even my mic, because they are all attached to the surface of my desk which rises to the required height. My scanner for documents is built into my printer, which is just to the left of the desk with the 3D printer on it, so it’s literally just a 180-degree spin around to get to that. I also decided to leave my landline phone on my old desk, as that is easy to spin around to as well and it keeps my new desk as clear of junk as possible.

Here’s another shot of the new desk from the front, to give you an idea of what I see as I stand at the desk. One inconvenience, that I knew I was going to have to deal with, is that the window reflects quite badly on the right monitor if I have the curtains open, so I have to tilt it to the left quite a lot to avoid that during the day. It’s not too much of a pain, and was pretty much unavoidable, as I wanted to keep my desk next to my music keyboard. The only other option will I am still contemplating, is moving my dry cabinet that is to the left of my desk over to the right of my music keyboard stuff. That way I’ll have a wall behind me rather than a window, so the reflection should be much less an issue.

Thinking about it, as I finish recording this, it will be the first podcast that I’ve recorded standing up as well. Just standing up may not be a whole lot of exercise, but I can tell you, after sitting for most of the last few months, it takes its toll, so standing has to be good for us, and it’s getting easier every day to stand for longer periods. I’m based in Japan and I got my desk from Nitori, so as most of you are not based in Japan, I haven’t sought out links to similar products in other markets, but a quick look around should provide you with some options. If you have bought something you can recommend, please do drop a link in the comments for others. Either way, I hope you found this useful, as possible food for thought if you also sit a lot, as I did until now.

Show Notes

Music by Martin Bailey

Audio

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