How To Use a Standing (or Sit-Stand) Desk

My messy desk in the sitting and the standing position

It's well known by now that sitting at a desk all day isn't good for you, and standing desks—also called sit-stand desks—have exploded in popularity. To the point that it might be considered a fad.

But I love mine.

There are a lot of options. You can get just the leg set, and then you can have a local cabinetmaker craft a custom top in whatever size and whatever kind of wood you prefer (in our area we have loads of Mennonite woodshops that will provide reasonably-priced, very well made solid wood furniture of any specification or design on demand). You can buy inexpensive hand-crank models. Or you can just buy a complete desk that comes with a tabletop, like I did four years ago. (Word to the wise: do opt for the "expert assembly" if it's available in your area.) If you really want to go all-out there's even a beautiful, deluxe new type with four separate legs that comes in several colors and sizes. (This is the killer app among current options, and it's apparently considerably easier to assemble yourself—assembling the older two-legged ones like I have is a challenge. The "expert assembly" guys who came to my house worked for two hours. Two guys. Two hours. Glad that wasn't li'l ol' me.)

What you might not know is that standing all day might not be all that good for you either. The trick is to change your state a lot—get into the habit of changing position. Sit for a while, stand for a while, sit for a while. If you can mix in "microwalks" it's a very good idea, too. Take a two-minute walk to the water-cooler every hour or so. Just make sure those walks aren't to the soda machine (at work) or the kitchen (at home)! A slightly longer brisk walk (5–15 minutes) at midday is a smart idea too.

I have these microwalks built into my day because of the dogs. They're also my built-in exercise timer (theirs, but also mine.) I also touch my toes for thirty seconds once or twice a day. (This takes longer than you'd think because it takes a while to stretch all the way down there.)

Here's the right way to use a standing desk: every hour or two, raise the desk to standing height. Take a standing position with your feet comfortably (about should-width) apart and deliberately put equal weight on both feet.

When you catch yourself shifting your weight, sit down again.

That's it. Doesn't have to be any amount of time. Two minutes, six minutes, twelve minutes, doesn't matter. As soon as you shift your weight it's a sign of discomfort and you've been standing long enough. Take a load off. Sit.

It's the intermittent change of position that does you good.

And don't forget those little walks.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Speed: "The power of photography—I am now going to clean my desk."

Comments

[Ed Kirkpatrick]

I have always wanted a standing desk. Donald Rumsfeld used one at Defense. My problem right now is that it won't fit in my RV home without the wife leaving.

[MikeR]

What messy desk? You can still see some of the desktop.

[lyle allan]

The office across the way got standing desks for their workers as well this mat...supposed to help with fatigue. http://ergodriven.com/topo/

[Bryce Lee]

Saw the two photographs of your desk and thought: "the only real difference (to me) is the mess on the desk has been raised to greater heights."

[Mike S]

Standup desks are good, but standup desks with two independently elevating platforms are even better. One narrower platform at the rear for the monitors and a wider platform at the front for keyboards, mice, etc. This gives you the option of raising the desk to stand and then lowering the monitors slightly to look down at them. The difference to your neck is amazing.

Expensive? Undoubtedly, luckily I didn't pay for it But it's one of the few "benefits" of working in a 911 center. They try to keep the employees healthy during the twelve hour shifts.

[Alan Fairley]

I was in a scientist’s office a few months ago and he had a treadmill set up in front of his standing desk . . . . If you can walk and send texts on your phone, I guess you can walk and send emails at your standing desk . . . .

[Jimmy Reina]

Not long ago, my office purchased new desks and chairs, which virtually no one uses-they use a long common table instead.
Because I am short, I find the long table/office chair height relationship uncomfortable, so I have taken to standing at one of the utility countertops. I have found that being on my feet keeps me moving about more, whether squirming in place, or going back and forth to the copier for each document.

[kirk Tuck]

Another thing that's very good for general health and muscle tone (if you are tied to a desk) is to set an alarm every hour, stop working when the alarm goes off, stand up, lie on the floor on your stomach and execute 10-20 perfect, slow push-ups. Keep a straight line from head to your feet (no dipping at the stomach!!! and no surrender to a "knee" push up) and you'll build muscle mass and tone abs. At the end of the average work day you will have done at least 80 perfect push ups. After the first month of this daily routine you could add five more push ups per hour per month. You'll be an Adonis in no time. And it's all free. No pricey desk required. In fact, you can do this anywhere --- but the authorities will give you a second look if you do this in the airport.... and it's good to find a clean surface...

[Manuel]

I know the following will apply for the Most Inopportune Comment Of The Year (MICOTY) accolade, but your chair doesn't look terribly ergonomic. In fact it looks quite uncomfortable. And it forces you to have your elbows on a hard surface, which is not good. If you allow me some friendly piece of advice, I'd say it's about time you purchased a proper office chair.
And the desk should be deep enough to acommodate your forearms, so to relieve the strain from your shoulders and elbows. My desk used to have a very similar layout, which made me tuck my elbows on the chair's hardwood supports; as a result, I frequently suffered from epicondilitis and shoulder pain. All that changed when I managed to get more space to lay my arms on the desk when typing.
It's not clear from the photo, but if you haven't got one yet, you should consider an ergonomic mouse mat. They work well.

[Daniel Sroka]

If you are like me, and don't want your whole desk to move, I recommend the Ergotron Sit-Stand workstation. It bolts to your desk, and then just the monitor and keyboard move up and down.

https://www.ergotron.com/en-us/products/product-details/33-341#/

[Thomas Mc Cann]

We are in the office furniture business and sell that type of desk you have. I cannot imagine how ot took 2 guys 2 hours to build one. 30 minutes max for us.

If god had meant us to touch our toes he'd have put them on our knees

[It might have been because they were idiots. They broke at least one thing on the desk as they installed it, which doesn't speak well for their expertise. On the good side, the desk survived the trip from Wisconsin in the moving van, assembled, with no ill effects. --Mike]

[David Aiken]

I used to work in health and safety in an office environment and we provided standing desks for some of our staff with back problems. There are 2 ways of alternating between standing and sitting if your desk is height adjustable as your is. One way is to alter the height of the desk as you swap between standing and sitting.

The other way is actually simpler and, I think, preferable. Leave the desk at standing height permanently and use a height adjustable draughtsman's chair. Adjust the chair height so that when you sit on it, you're at the right height for the desk. Then when you want to work standing you simply get off the chair and push it out of the way. The advantage of this method is that once you have the desk height adjusted to the optimum standing work height and the chair adjusted to the optimum height for sitting work, you never have to adjust either again. You have to move the chair out of the way to work standing if you're going to adjust the desk height so moving a draughting chair out of the way or back to the desk isn't adding a task to your process but not having to adjust the desk height each time you change working posture removes a task and makes life a little easier plus you can always be certain that your posture at the desk will be correct once you have the desk and chair heights set to their optimum levels for you.

[Rob de Loe]

Standing desks are excellent. One addition to your setup would be a sturdy foam mat. The really good ones are heavy and awkward to move; that's a problem in your setup because the chair has to be where you will be standing, so you need to be able to move the mat easily. A really cheap solution is to buy a good quality pilates mat, cut it in half, and glue the two pieces together. I used double-sided tape and it's holding together nicely. This makes a dense, comfortable mat when standing, and it's very light so you can easily move it out of the way.

[David Aiken]

Addition to my earlier post: tips on correct posture.

To set the desk at the correct height sit or stand with your arms hanging naturally by your side and then raise your forearms so that they are at right angles to your upper arms. The keyboard should sit with your fingers naturally on the keys when your arms are in that position so adjust desk height until that happens. Then adjust the monitor height so the top of the screen is level with your eyebrows when your head is balanced naturally on your erect neck. That places the centre of the screen lower than your eyes because your natural line of gaze angles slightly down from the horizontal. Adjust the tilt of the screen until your natural line of gaze meets the screen at right angles.

With a standing desk adjust the desk height for standing position first and then if you're using a draughting chair adjust the chair height so that your arms are in the same position as they are in the standing position. You then don't have to make any monitor adjustments when you swap positions.

If you're not using a draughting chair and you need to adjust the desk height for sitting work then you need to get your seat height correct first so that you're sitting comfortably with your feet on the ground and bring the desk down so your arms are in the correct position at the keyboard as outlined above. The monitor adjustments won't change.

People who haven't been working with the correct posture tend to say that they find this position uncomfortable when they first start using it but it's not uncomfortable, it's actually unfamiliar. We don't like being aware of our posture because we're usually only aware of our posture when it's uncomfortable but we are aware of it when we make a change in something that has become habitual. If you persevere with the posture for a few days so that it becomes familiar you find that you stop being aware of it and then you start noticing that you no longer are feeling as tired at the end of the day and that you don't have the neck pain you may have been experiencing before. It can take a few days to a week or so for the new position to become familiar and once that happens it will stop feeling uncomfortable.

Tall people tend to have the most problems because they're used to tables and desks which are a bit too low for them and they develop bad posture habits as a result. If you work sitting and your desk is not heigh adjustable and it's too low, then raise the desk by putting something like bricks or telephone books under it to raise it up enough or to just a little too high and then adjust the chair height to suit the correct posture at that height. If that means your feet can't reach the floor (a problem some short people have) then use a footstool or something like a telephone book under your feet so that they can rest comfortably on something.

Getting the desk height and the monitor height and tilt right really does make a big difference to not only your comfort at work but also how you feel at the end of the day.

[Robert Johnston]

You can touch your toes?!! Respect.

[Robert Harshman]

When using a computer, never use it for more than 15 minutes without at least looking away from it for a few. I have three work areas in my home office(s) and move from/to them quite often. I do a lot of batch processing of image conversion from RAW to Tiff, saving extremely large files from 16bit with layers to 8 bit with none to making large batches of 360 interactive files and of course the all important double backups that can take hours. So I walk away from my computers and "desks" all the time. Best for you if you do too.

[Kristine Hinrichs]

I find I get the best of both by having a counter-height desk with a comfy bar-stool height chair. I find that I’m always moving around on the stool - and can stand when I want to without the technology of a standing desk. Also here in the Milwaukee area at a local elementary school they are studying whether stand-up desks reduce behavior “issues” in the classroom. It is still in process.

[Tim Auger]

I wonder if a standing desk would deal with intermittently swollen ankles? One of those many trivial but wearing signs of age ...

[Bear.]

Mess is when you can't have a sit-stand desk because it all falls off when you raise and lower it.

[Chris Bertram]

I have a Jarvis. The nice thing about them is that you can just buy the frame and then choose the worktop that suits you.

[Mark]

Might I be so bold as to suggest lightweight dumbbells nearby for a few sets of curls and presses every so often. Weightlifting is well known to help stave off the aging process and if you are not engaged in it, then get yourself an old, cheap 1 Series camera and lift it up and down.

[Ger Lawlor]

Next photo competition - readers' standing desks!

[Marcelo Guarini]

My desk is messier than yours Mike, and can't be raised.

[Michael Martin-Morgan]

Or use one of these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teknik-Ergonomic-Kneeling-Chair-Charcoal/dp/B00359Z8VE

[Dave Stewart]

Colour cast to your monitor... or rose tint?