Standing Desk Experiment Results

I heard everyone’s enjoyment about standing desks. How it helped with various pains and made people feel healthier. I have an awesome IKEA desk which can be assembled in many ways, so when we moved back to Chicago I took the opportunity to assemble it into a standing desk.

It took 3-4 weeks for me to have the endurance to stand at it all day. After a couple weeks, at the recommendation of every standing desk reviewer ever, I purchased a standing mat. It, of course, helped tremendously.

The problems came when I reviewed my work habits. After long runs in the morning (6+ miles), I didn’t have the stamina to stand at my desk. I’d end up working at the dinning room table or on the floor. No surprise, my back didn’t agree with sitting on the floor for extender periods of time while programming.

Even on non-running days I noticed that I wasn’t doing focused work. It was easy for me to take a step or two away while the code compiled or to walk away simply to stretch my legs.

I was barley ever getting into the “flow.” And when I was, it wasn’t for long periods of time.

Therefore, after 3 months of experimenting with a standing desk, I’m back to a normal desk and it feels great.

I try to make sure I’m always evaluating my processes. Incremental improvements like this can have profound impacts on your life, but sometimes those experiments don’t work out. You need to be able to identify when that is the case and do something about.