Couple of years back I got introduced to the "Standing Desk" concept while I was on a business trip to my company's office in the silicon valley. It seems the concept is becoming popular in the software industry in the valley. After studying its benefits, I decided to go for it while I was working at Cisco... Now its been more than a a couple of years since I am using it, and i must say that I am loving it :-)
Next week I will turn 1 year old at VMWare's Pune R&D center. Like most of folks joining from Cisco, I am quite excited to be part of an R&D team of a pure software company. With VMWare entering networking market there is a huge scope for innovation here and I can feel it every day with so much of brainstorming happening around events like Borathon & RADIO!
Coming to the topic of this blog… after joining here last year I setup my standing desk in the office cube and started using it everyday. As a result there were a few inquiries from curious neighbors & passerby’s why am I using a standing desk. Many of the folks here who have visited VMWare Palo Alto office have seen people standing while working. Some of them thought the reason for those people to use a standing desk could be back pain or some similar health issue. So here I am striving to shed some light on what are standing desks and how one can benefit from them...
Q. So what is a standing desk???
A. 1. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk or 2. Visit my desk for a live demo!
Note that my “standing desk” is pretty much a jugaad. If you go to some of the tech companies in valley such as Facebook, Cisco, Google or Linkedin, you will see all sorts of adjustable standing desks & chairs.
Q. Why use a standing desk?
A. You can find a lot of material on the web about the health benefits of using a standing desk. For a quick glance checkout this link. My only motivation for using the standing desk is to enjoy the health benefits of standing while working. Some of the benefits include more calories burnt during the work hours, improved metabolism, better posture etc. resulting in lower risks of acquiring some of the diseases resulting from prolonged practice of sitting during work hours. I have been using a standing desk for more than a year now, and I can vouch by its benefits. Of course sometimes it is tiring to stand & work the whole day. So I follow a pattern of alternating between standing & sitting. I am using RSI Guard software which gives alerts at predefined intervals to switch between the standing & switching postures. Having two monitors really helps here. I have mounted one monitor on a elevated desk platform whereas kept the other one on the usual desk platform.
I would definitely encourage the reader to try out using a standing desk. And I would be glad to hear your comments & feedback after doing so…
Happy Standing!
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