Introduction

I’ve been a long time admirer of standing desks but never seen the need to get one at home until the pandemic struck. I then continued to toy with the idea for the first 12 months of working from home trying to decide if I actually needed one at all. However after various conversations on Twitter and .NET Oxford and when I saw there was an offer at Flexispot for a frame which fitted my needs I took the plunge.

It took another month or two before the right situation of room swapping with my son was scheduled to get it setup and constructed but now a month on of using it I am loving it.

I was recommended by various people that I should not stand for too much to start with and allow my body to get used to it. So I have been taking small increments and working up to an amount of time which works for me at the moment.

Stand up for Stand up

After about 6-9 months of working from home in the pandemic I was starting to realise my movement was not good generally during the day. I would sit for long periods of time between walking downstairs to grab a coffee and returning to my chair. I needed to do something to get moving.

The one thing in the office which my team all did was our daily stand ups (huddle, scrum whatever you want to call it) and we would all move from our desks to stand around the tv to review the scrum board and give our morning update to the team. We still had these meetings but I didn’t stand up for them. Why not? I didn’t have an answer to this question so I started adjusting my web cam and standing for the meeting.

This has now progressed into the beginning of my morning “stand” with my new desk. I will start standing at 9:30 for the meeting and I continue after that for anywhere from 60-90 minutes is my current sweet spot before returning to the chair.

Standing and Coding

I must admit I’m not at the place in my current projects that I am coding full time at the moment so I have yet to properly get “in the zone” and code while standing. However I have found standing up for meetings very beneficial. I find that I am able to articulate my point and it’s almost like presenting while having the discussion. I’ve found it very comfortable and helps things flow.

I am looking forward to the next phase of projects where I am headphones on and in the zone writing code to see how the standing helps or hinders this.

Conclusion

I think it’s safe to say that I am sold on the standing desk concept. After only a month of usage I am really enjoying it. I know there will be adjustments I will need to make over time. I still don’t quite think I’ve got the height right when standing and as I type this post I can feel that the height still isn’t quite right. But that’s ok, moving on and learning etc. is part of life. I will continue to “Stand Up for Stand Up” and I strongly recommend anyone else who is attending these types of meetings on Teams/Zoom to also do so even if it is just for 15 minutes. I am also looking forward to my next presentation talk at a virtual meetup (although not booked in anywhere yet, get in contact if interested in hearing me waffle about something for a period of time) but I can see me doing my next talk standing. Standing makes it feel a bit more like presenting and not just sitting in a meeting and even standing in meetings I feel it’s easier to explain concepts etc.

Let me know your thoughts about standing desks. Do you enjoy it? Do you wish you’d not spent the money? Any tips to share? Please get in contact on Twitter @WestDiscGolf, my DMs are open.