“Seated posture” is my weakness. As part of my gym training, which has an emphasis on functional fitness, I need to be able to do a deep squat (also sometimes known as a “Third World Squat”). I can’t do this to save my life. Almost every time I get down in the squat position I lose balance and end up falling backwards. My trainer says it’s because the moment I lower myself down, my body goes into “seated posture”. This is the product of countless hours spent sitting down in front of a computer.

Over the past couple of months I’ve also been seeing articles online about people who now do computer work standing up, and about the general health dangers of spending so much time sitting down:

• Stand while you read this!
• Stand while you work
• Can’t stand too long? There’s a desk for that

I didn’t want to have to buy a new desk, but I did want to start work standing up. My solution? Old books and lots of them:

Getting hold of old programming books is pretty easy for a programmer - you either own a load yourself, or you know other programmers who do. The set up isn’t ideal, I would like to elevate the screens so they are directly at eye level but stability becomes a bit of an issue. One advantage of the set up however, is that it is pretty easy to revert to working whilst sitting down if I want to. I just take the keyboard and mouse and put them on the desk again. The screens are still comfortable to work with whilst sitting down.

So how am I finding the transition to working standing up? The first couple of days were pretty damned tiring. Now I just feel a lot more active and energized compared to when I was always sitting down. It also means I tend to grab the wooden pole I keep near the desk to do flexibility exercises a lot more often.