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Today is my third day working at a standing desk. I had originally thought I would stand for a couple of hours - until my laptop battery died - and then switch back to my desk.
That was five hours ago. I’m still standing, and I’ve gone to get my AC adapter for my laptop! I’ve only sat down today to eat lunch. I have to say I feel like my energy levels are much higher while standing, and it’s much easier to not let myself be distracted by sitting back and reading blogs and catching up on the news.
One thing I have noticed is that my back feel fine - there was some tightness in my lower back initially - but my feet don’t like standing on the hard floor. My office has thin carpet over concrete floors, so I need to go track down a rug or something with a little padding on which to stand.
June 2nd, 2008
Jacob
For a long time now I’ve read all about the benefits of standing while working. I’ve wanted to get a standing desk for a long time, but when I priced out real honest-to-goodness standing desks…well I just don’t have that kind of money to try something I may end up hating.
So imagine my happiness when over Memorial Day weekend I happened into an Ikea store and found their Vika desk legs and tops which allowed me to build a small standing desk cheaply to test it out.
I purchased 4 Vika Byske legs for $30 each (adjustable from 27.5″ to 42.125″) and a Vika Amon tabletop for $19.99.
Here’s what it looks like (click to enlarge).
I’ve been standing at it for a little over an hour and a half now. Here are some of my observations:
1) My feet are starting to get sore, and I can feel a little tightness in my lower back. I’ve read online that there is an adjustment period when switching to a standing workspace, so hopefully this will be a temporary problem.
2) My hands and wrists feel pretty good. When I’m sitting I’m frequently guilty of resting my wrists on my desk and just being generally un-ergonomic. My hands and lower arms will get a little numb and tingly after a while when I’m sitting. So far I’ve noticed that the change in my posture seems to be making my hands feel much better.
3 I’ve gotten a lot of weird looks, and plenty of comments like, “What’s that?” and “Why would you want to stand?” Looks like I’m going to have to be prepared to be the office “kook” for awhile. On a positive note several people have come up and commented on how cool my idea is. I’ll slowly convert them all!
4) Being on my feet makes me feel more energetic! I’ve run back and forth a few times to the copy room this afternoon with nary a thought about it. Before I would plan out trips because I was comfortable - and lazy - sitting on my duff. Now I just grab papers and go - I very much like the freedom it gives.
5) Right now the desktop is 43.25″ high and it feels pretty good. The Ikea system looks like it’s actually designed to be attached to the wall on one edge with just two legs under it (not four) so it’s a little wobbly. It’s perfectly workable, but for a long, long term solution I would want a “real” standing desk.
I’ll post periodic updates on my experiment with standing while I work. I think that a good mix of standing and sitting will be best as it’s awful easy to flit from task to task while standing. I don’t feel like I can concentrate and focus as much as I’m just full of energy. So combining standing when I need a burst of productivity with sitting when I really need to roll up my sleeves and crunch numbers should prove to be a great system.
More to come!
May 29th, 2008
Jacob
I had an interesting thing happen today, someone used the contact form on this web site and asked me if I would be interested in selling a blog posting and/or a text link.
I’ve written in the past about building passive income streams, so I was interested to learn if the products or services this person wanted to promote would align with my own values for this site. I replied back and asked what they were selling.
The reply that came back was…payday loans.
They even prefaced their reply with, “I appreciate that your stance on our industry may be negative, but assure you that we are not out to editorialize or sway you in any way.”
Fair enough, we can agree to disagree on the “benefits” of payday loans, but what really made me stop and consider the state of paid-for-post blogging was this next sentence:
“To be frank, even a post about reasons to avoid payday loans would probably prove beneficial, while of course not vilifying our company in any way.”
Wow. They were offering me the perfect out, I could write a don’t-use-payday-loans post and still get paid - how could I say no?
Payday loans are a blight on the communities they’re in, and the fact they’re not illegal puzzles me (I know why, they spend a lot of cash lobbying for exclusions from usury laws). They put the people they purport to help into a cycle of near eternal-debt and the rates they charge are more than usurious. I don’t think it’s possible to over-vilify these companies!
I’m not naming companies or providing links, but their web site lists the APR on the loans at between 507% and 1304%. And that’s if you pay the loan in full when it’s due! If a “borrower” doesn’t pay the loan in full and makes minimum payments, the effective APR is even higher!
I certainly want to monetize my site and produce supplemental income, but I won’t do it at the expense of my beliefs and principals. What’s scary is that they would have been fine with a “negative” post, and I could have written this post and gotten paid for it. That seems to me a bit dishonest on everyone’s part; mine, the “advertiser’s”, and yours.
How about you? Is your conscience worth a little cash; even if you could “get away” with it?
January 28th, 2008
Jacob
The word “only” has been a good friend of mine. I’ve used it to justify a lot of dumb expenses in my life. I say things like, “Hey, adding HBO and Showtime to our satellite package is only $22 a month.” And I don’t think about how that’s really $264 a year (plus tax)!
It’s so easy to see that easy, low monthly payment and “only” yourself. And when you have a lot of “only” payments, pretty soon you’re looking at your bank account and wondering where all your money went.
I did a quick inventory of my current “only-ies” and calculated I’m spending $316 a month! That’s $3,792 a year that’s going out the door…a few bucks at a time. Yikes! Where’s that money going and how can I get it under control?
(Read the rest of this article…)
January 24th, 2008
Jacob
I’m “stuff” person…always have been. It’s not that I want to acquire stuff for the purpose of just acquiring it; I’m the kind of person who gets exciting by something, and then has to have all the requisite items and accessories to support whatever phase I’m going through.
For example, I got the wild urge to learn how to make a really good cup of coffee. I start researching everything that’s been say on the subject, and decided I needed to buy a bean roaster, a super-duper 18-bar coffee maker, and a special grinder for the fresh coffee beans I would have to purchase online. Cha-ching! Making a cuppa-joe just got expensive.
And not to long ago I would have had all that stuff in my shopping cart at Amazon or some other e-tailer and have been well on my way to checking out before I even paused to think about the money I was spending.
And because of that, I have spent a lot of money on a lot of dumb stuff. I had to come up with a way to temper temptation and stop spending money on things I didn’t really need.
So what works?
(Read the rest of this article…)
January 17th, 2008
Jacob
This is a unique article - a bit rant and a bit non-productivity - but I’ll try to bring it around to the purpose and mission of this site, but forgive me if it misses the mark.
Over the last few months I’ve been working hard to improve my frugality. I’ve never before been described as frugal or any other word approaching frugality. But back in the fall I just decided that too much of my money was going out the door on dumb things, and that I worked too hard to be stupid with my money.
So I’ve been evaluating how and where I spend money, and one of the things I decided to do was scale back the programming package I have with Dish Networks. With the writers on strike (and the sad state of TV in general) my wife and I haven’t been watching nearly as much TV, but we’ve been paying through the nose to have it!
So I logged on to my Dish Network account online to downgrade my programming. Simple.
At least I thought it would be simple until I couldn’t find a way to actually downgrade my programming, only ways to upgrade my programming (and spend more money)!
(Read the rest of this article…)
January 11th, 2008
Jacob
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of productivity, organization tools, life-hacks…those things really tickle me deep down. I get a kick out of hearing about a new tip or trick to make my life easier.
This one I stumbled on by accident, and it’s my favorite so far - one of the simplest too.
The idea? Put you important to-dos and memos where you’ll see them when it counts most; first-thing when you wake up and last-thing before bed.
Where? Your bathroom mirror.
How? Dry-erase markers! (a buck, or less)
Yep, you read that right. Write on your bathroom mirror with a dry-erase marker. It’s likely the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see before bed.
Did you tell a co-worker you would bring a them book? Write it on the mirror before bed and you won’t forget in the morning. Were you supposed to pickup something on your way to work? Write it on the mirror and you won’t have to worry about remembering.
It helps you have - like David Allen advocates - “a mind like water.”
There are two caveats to be aware of with this tip - so take note:
1) Writing all over the bathroom mirror has a low WAF (wife acceptance factor). Some will yell; most will look at you like you’ve gone insane, roll their eyes, sigh heavily, and tell you to “clean that up.” It helps if you have your own bathroom.
2) The marker wipes off with a little bath tissue, but doing so will leave some streaks. You’ll have to clean your mirror more often than you otherwise would (I believe this contributes to the low WAF), but it’s worth it.
I have a nearly foolproof method to overcome the low WAF problem. Before you start note-taking, go into the bathroom, stand where they would, and look in the mirror. Now draw a big heart framing your head and shoulders and write something suitably sweet underneath (”I ‘wuv’ you” works well).
Most importantly, don’t say anything about it. Don’t say, “Honey come check this out!”. Leave it alone and let them find it. They will by the end of the day, and you’ll get major brownie points for being such a big sweetie. Now you can start to make notes out to the edge of the mirror and work your way to the middle. After that, your imagination is the limit.
I use an Expo marker. They don’t have fumes that make you feel stoned, and in a small bathroom that’s a good thing. You can probably liberate a spare marker from your office, I have 10 different colors in the tray of my white board - I’ve only ever used red, black, and blue. One bit of advice: get a black marker; the dark color will show up a lot better on the mirror.
So there’s my $1.00 idea. It makes me happy inside every time I erase a to-do I’ve added to my mirror, and I’ve been able to stop worrying about those loose tasks that need attention, but that I don’t always stop to add to a paper list!
December 14th, 2007
Jacob
We’ve all heard the quote (often mis-attributed to Dr. W. Edwards Deming) that…”you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
When working on reaching your goals (you do set SMART goals right?) you have to monitor and measure your progress so you know when you’ve achieved your goal, but you need to do more than just measuring to truly manage your goals.
(Read the rest of this article…)
November 8th, 2007
Jacob
Last month I wrote an article titled What’s coming in your future?. In it, I described how a quote from David Allen’s book Ready for Anything had really resonated with me.
I came into the office this morning and checked through my tickler file and sitting there in the folder labeled “29″ was the index card from last month.
Scrawled on the front in my chicken-scratch writing - “Something is coming - probably within a few days - that’s going to change your world. You don’t see it yet. You don’t know what it’s about. But it’s there, rolling inexorably forward, destined to throw you a curve that you do not expect. It could show up sooner or later - but it will show up. Trust me.”
A week and a half after putting that card back into my tickler file to re-check in a month I found myself on an operating room table with a surgeon poised to take my gallbladder out. It was 4 days from the time I found out I had a bad gallbladder to the time the surgeon was digging around in my innards. I certainly didn’t see that coming. I’m ordinarily in fairly good health, and had never otherwise had any problems with my gallbladder.
Today I was reflecting back on how timely and appropriate that quote is. But even more, it got me to thinking that it doesn’t really matter when you review that quote because something is always going to be coming. Life doesn’t stop sending curve balls and trying to generally mix things up for you.
(Read the rest of this article…)
October 29th, 2007
Jacob
A co-worker and I were recently talking movies. Specifically what we had coming from Netflix. I mentioned a few movies he wasn’t familiar with and he asked if I knew of any way to “share” my Netflix queue so he could see it too.
I said I didn’t, so we logged into my account to see what options were available. It was then when I noticed the “Community” button where I was able to invite my friend, and we could see each others’ queues. Very cool.
So if you’re curious what I’ve watched, or am getting ready to watch click over and become my Netflix friend.
I’m always into seeing new movies, and would love to see what you’re watching too. Sure, it’s not a tip that will boost your productivity into the stratosphere, but taking a break every now and then to watch a movie is sure good for your creativity. At least that’s what I keep telling myself!
October 25th, 2007
Jacob
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