I’m pretty sure that most of my back pain stem from being over 6’2″ tall. Most desks / chairs aren’t really designed for people my size and as I spend the vast majority of my waking hours sat working at a desk this can lead to real problems.
When I had the luxury of being in the employ of a company that cared about these sorts of things, I made it my business to ensure that I had a chair that suited my height, I had some nice desk raisers purchased on my behalf and my screen and laptop sat on their own adjustable stands. All of this not only helped me to achieve good posture so that I could avoid the headaches and back aches that might otherwise have made my working life very uncomfortable, it also drummed into me the guidelines for good ‘workstation ergonomics’. I won’t bore off with those here, but there’s a wonderful image on Wikipedia.
Since going the route of the freelancer and working mostly out of a home office, I’ve found myself without the luxury of an office supplies catalogue, a bank account with thousands of pounds in it and a health and safety representative to badger for this sort of thing. As such, there were old-outdated computer manuals under my screen and a 24 pack of Tesco value cola under my keyboard & mouse mat. This all seemed to work quite well, and I have been comfortably working with this arrangement for a couple of years.
just lately I have started to become a little sick and tired of sitting down all the time. I sit down to work. I sit down to relax. I sit down on the train or in the car on the way to a meeting. I sit down when having dinner or lunch and then, finally, I lay down to go to sleep at the end of the day…
Sedentary lifestyle, you say? Exactly.
I first heard of the (now becoming very fashionable) concept of a standing desk when listening to Build and Analyze episode 21 , but it wasn’t until I read 5 Ways to Stay Healthy As A Freelancer on that I decided that it might be time to try it out. I think it was while mulling over the paragraph…
If you’re particularly ambitious, you might also want to look into a standing desk. Research has shown that people who stand on their jobs live longer than those who sit.
…that something finally snapped and I grabbed my old tea-chest bass and a wooden shelving unit and away I went…
Will update a fresh blog post with how it’s going very soon!
If you’re interested How and Why I Switched To A Standing Desk is an interesting read on the subject.
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