Pragmatic Geek

I have converted to a standup workstation. To be clear, this is a motorized, height adjustable desk, used mostly in the standing standing position.

I won’t make this about why you should try a standing workstation, but I’ll share my motivations and lessons learned, on the chance that it may inform your own debate.

Why did I do it?

• Posture.
• My sitting posture is terrible, based on decades of bad habits. At a desk, I rarely sit in the “proper” position. I’m either heavily reclined (often twisted with my feet up on the desk), or heavily forward, forearms completely on the desk. I’ve never used a keyboard tray.
• My family is seeing the benefits of regular visits to a Rolfing structural integration specialist. A tenet of of that practice is the alignment and balance of our musculature. We are more balanced standing than sitting, so constant sitting works against the alignment.
• Walking. When I’m on the phone, I can’t seem to sit still, and I’ll pace back and forth for the entire call. It’s easier to make that transition, as well as adding walking to thinking interludes.
• Activity. As I’ve been trying to become more active to reverse my slow weight gain over the last 20 years, the extra 50 cal/hour is a nice bonus.
• True, there are plenty of articles about the hazards of sitting all day. Those weren’t huge motivators, other than they point out the other aspects above

What effects have I seen?

• I move more. Rather than adjusting between different sitting tilts, I can rock on my feet, side to side, front to back, stand on one leg, etc. It feels good.
• I sit to take breaks. Yes, it’s tiring to be on your feet for long stretches. But it makes so much sense to reverse the “best practice” of “stand and stretch every hour” with “take the weight off every hour.”
• Related to that, in terms of practicing focus, it’s easier to tie the break to the activity of sitting, and the break is over when the position changes. It’s a good mental hack.

How did I do it?

• I started with boxes on a side of my desk, such that I could move my laptop easily between a standing and sitting configuration. I didn’t deal with integrating the 2nd monitor during this experimental stage.
• I gradually increased the duration of the standing sessions until I was going nearly the whole day.
• As I did this, I became convinced that a pure standing station was unsustainable, so I shifted my sights on motorized, elevating desks.
• I learned that the screen positions relative to desktop/keyboard height is different standing and sitting. This informed my decision to add adjustable monitor arms to the mix. (The Ergotron dual arms are a beauty to use; I wish everything were made this solid)
• I bought my first pair of Crocs, at the recommendation of a (standing workstation using) friend as the best padding for foot fatigue.
• I ended up buying a desk from Conset (via Jaymil). They have a wide selection, and are less industrial looking than the venerable GeekDesk. (Apparently, I’m not the only one attracted to this, because there was an almost 4 week backorder for all US distributors)

As a followup to an earlier post on focus, I want to share some of my initial conclusions. Hopefully my experience will encourage others to take the leap towards focus, and I can only hope some managers will read this and ponder what the lack of focus is doing to the productivity of their staff.

My new role is to prototype and research upcoming technologies or products, enabling our business to become more proactive about disruptive technology. Each project is designed to run for 2-3 weeks before wrapping up with a presentation, and then moving on to the next opportunity. (If the business likes what they see, other groups will be responsible for taking the prototype to the next phase.)

In short, I get to work on one thing, all day, every day, for 2-3 weeks, and then it’s done. What has that meant for me?

• I’ve gotten so much done. I’ve written about 3500 lines of new code in 3 weeks, with an equal amount of testing code in order to achieve 100% unit test coverage. I’ve modernized the build environment, runtime frameworks, and sped up testing cycles.
• I’ve gotten hard stuff done. This project was dealing with a legacy code base and ways to modernize it in an incremental fashion. As an application architect, I’ve always visualized my job as a chess game, lining up moves in the far future, defending against surprises, and preserving the integrity of the current position. Jumping into a older code base, it’s even more important to tread lightly, which takes a higher level of concentration.
• I finish the day accomplished and tired from mental exertion, rather than frustrated from lack of significant forward motion. There used to be days where a stiff drink was the only closure to a joyless day, but now I actually understand the origin of “happy hour.”
• Focus can snowball. In the old days, when juggling lots of projects, it was too easy to fill the cracks between meetings with wasteful activities like Facebook and surfing. “Hey, I’ve only got 10 minutes before the next meeting, can’t get anything meaningful done, I’ll just check Twitter.” Now, legitimate breaks come at the end a burst of activity.
• I still get up about 5am, but now I’m anxious to pick up progress from where I left off the the day before, rather than spend the prime 1.5 hours of the day plowing through email.
• Inbox Zero? Who cares? There have been multiple days where I haven’t gotten a legitimate email until almost lunch time. Rather than all this talk about how to tame the email beast, what if we arranged our projects such that volumes of email were unecessary?

Through all of this, I’ve been conscious of how much the telecommuting situation has helped. I don’t have external events interrupting my focus, and when I need a break, I do it on my time, and in my own way. In the office, I’d be embarrassed by the happy dance I do when something goes well.

Please friends, consider ways you can create focus in your workday – it’s completely transformative to productivity and happiness.

A side-effect of telecommuting is that co-workers don’t get to see the working environment of the other voices on the phone. Here’s mine, with commentary on the things I choose to keep on my desk.

1. The view, the winning feature
   • Good ergonomics call for periodically giving eyes a rest by focusing on a distant object. Done!
   • They also recommend not putting a computer in front of a window, since the intensity of outside light relative to screens causes eye fatigue. Thanks, I’ll take the view. It’s also a good way to avoid all glare.
   • I’ve seen deer, bald eagles, and foxes. (The bears are on the other side of the house)
2. MacBook Pro, my workhorse.
• 17″ is the only size that can display a full resolution portrait version of the iPad simulator, useful for doing iOS development when away from home
• I actually have 2, one for work, and one for personal, and I swap them out depending on the time of day.
3. 2nd monitor
• Rotated to portrait mode, I get 1600 pixels high, which is awesome reading and code comprehension
• The alternate orientation mode also tricks the mind to not getting distracted by the different DPI of the two screens (windows get bigger on the big screen)
4. Phone
• The phone is a replacement for sitting in conference rooms. In the 534 days I’ve had this phone, I’ve accumulated 56.8 days of talk time (10% of my life!)
• Must have a bluetooth earpiece. This is the Jawbone ERA, and I’m very happy with it. My earpieces last 12-15 months before they break or get lost, so I’ve had several.
5. iPad
• I do a lot of work on this device, including outlining and task management.
• The stand is a Griffin Loop, great for pulling it close to and typing
• It’s a great device for watching screencast conference calls (webex, etc), since it essentially becomes a 3rd monitor.
6. Keyboard, wireless
• Without the extra keys, my right arm has a short distance to travel to the pointing device
• I used to swear by the big Microsoft Natural keyboards, but with the low travel keys, I don’t miss it.
7. Trackpad – much more comfortable than the mouse. Keep in sync with the motor memory of gestures
8. Coffee mug. Since I’m known to spill things, the wide-base format has saved me.
9. External hard drives. With Time Machine (standard Mac feature), there’s no reason to not stay current on backups.
10. Triangle laptop stand.
• This allows the laptop to cantilever over the desk where my keyboard goes. I type with my forearms fully on the desk, so the keyboard sits very far forward.
• It also keeps the computer safe from spilled drinks (see #8)
11. Chair. In my experience, chairs are about $100/year (A $200 chair will last 2 years). This one was ~$500 and it’s coming in cheaper than that. I’ve tried a BOSU ball, but it didn’t offer enough variety for positions. I sometimes like to twist and put my feet on the desk…