The problem with being a large person and spending a lot of time at a desk is ergonomics. It’s hard to find a desk/chair/keyboard/mouse/etc. that fits me. Adjustable office chairs don’t adjust high enough, or sink when I sit on them. My knees bang into desktops. Narrow keyboards cramp my wrists and give me carpal tunnel, ditto with mice. I’m 6′5″, 240, a good natural build for a middle linebacker, a machine gunner, or a mob henchman, but not such an ideal build for a writer.
The RSI issues started a couple of years ago with a constant stitch in my left shoulder. Then I developed shooting pain in my wrists that soon turned into constant throbbing arrows running from the tip of my middle fingers straight to my elbows. I went to a doctor and he sent me to physical therapy, where they told me to stop typing on a laptop and to sit properly. When I sat the way they told me, using a monitor at eye level and a full-sized keyboard placed on my lap, the shoulder pain disappeared within a week and the wrist pain mostly went away, but my lower back started to hurt. It got progressively worse over the last year and a half, to the point where during the last month, I couldn’t sit for more than fifteen minutes without the sciatic nerve on my left side starting to burn.
I tried more physical therapy, stretching, different chairs (including sitting on a yoga ball), glucosamine. (The glucosamine was a recommendation from a fellow large-framed writer, John Evans.) Stretching helped a little, as did a real multi-adjustable lumbar-supported office chair, but nothing really addressed the pain. So, finally, a couple of weeks ago I decided to try a more drastic measure, one I first heard of when the writer Oscar Casares mentioned it during a craft talk I attended a few years ago: I would build a standing workstation.
But whereas he, and many others — Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill — worked exclusively at a standing desk, I knew from my time as a bartender that standing too much presents its own problems, namely foot and knee pain. So I wanted to make a desk at which I could either stand or sit and be in an ergonomical typing position, with a monitor at eye level and the keyboard and mouse placed so that my elbows could be at 90 degrees and my wrists could be close to flat.
I also wanted it to be pretty easy to switch between standing and sitting, and for it to be cheap. After doing the measurements of my desired standing monitor height and keyboard height, and then taking a look around online, I realized that of the existing ready-made sit/stand desks, the cheaper ones were still pretty expensive (~$500) and didn’t have a wide enough range of adjustment to accomodate me. (To give you an idea of the range between a person my size sitting and standing, I needed something that could move a monitor roughly 27″ up and down.) A few of the nice ones could do that, but they cost a grand or more.
So I decided to build my own. I flirted with the idea of using a bookshelf, like this person, but that wouldn’t also allow me to sit, and I don’t really have room in my office space for separate standing and sitting workstations, which may also necessitate another entire computer. (Though the absolute cheapest option for a standing desk, and one I briefly considered, is probably an IKEA bookshelf — buy one tall enough to suit your height, then put the monitor on top and use the top adjustable shelf as a keyboard stand. One problem is, it seems like you’d be awfully close to your monitor.) After thinking a lot about it, drawing up a couple of tentative blueprints, and two trips to IKEA where I measured most of the office furniture they sell, I came up with a solution. Observe:
First, I wanted to use what I already had as much as possible: the IKEA Mikael desk, which is cheap and basic and relatively large, as well as my office chair, which is pretty comfortable (I don’t know the make or model — I inherited it from a former roommate). I was in the market for a new desktop computer, anyway, because my ancient G4 Power Mac finally stopped working. So I bought the cheapest, smallest, and most flexible Mac desktop, the Mac Mini.
I bought the mid-range one because I got an education discount and wanted the extra memory but was too lazy to upgrade it myself, but the base model would work just as well. That enabled me to keep the Apple wireless keyboard/mouse and 21.5″ Acer monitor I already had.
The first thing I had to address was monitor height: how could I raise my monitor more than two feet quickly, easily, and repeatedly, while still keeping it secure? The answer was that I couldn’t, or at least, that it would be more expensive and far more complicated to do that than it would be to buy a second monitor. One of the nice things about the Mac Mini (2009 and later models) is that it has dual-monitor functionality. I found a 20″ eMachines monitor on sale at OfficeMax for $99, and then found a wall-mounted arm on Amazon. (The OfficeMax sale ended, but you can find current monitor deals here, and that’s the cheapest arm on Amazon, not the exact one I bought — I bought a heavier-duty one because I’m paranoid and I live in an earthquake-prone area.) Then I measured and re-measured for my desired monitor height when standing, drilled the holes, and hung it on the wall. This is what it looks like.
Which left me with only one more problem, keyboard height. I thought I needed a keyboard at about 15″ above the desktop in my configuration, so I went to IKEA and found the cheapest piece of furniture that fit the general dimensions, the BILLY bookshelf extension, which is 14″ tall and wide enough (31″) for a keyboard and mouse.
This turned out to be the least effective part of the Standidesk, because it’s awkward to move onto and off of the desk when I want to switch from sitting to standing, even with a wireless keyboard and mouse. (I started with the Apple combo, but the tilt isn’t adjustable and you need a flat keyboard for typing while standing, so just tonight I bought a more comfortable and ergonomic Logitech Wave Desktop.) There’s also the issue of where to store the shelf when I’m sitting at my desk. I’ll probably replace this once I come up with a better solution, but I haven’t thought of one yet. I’m thinking about hacking apart the base of a cheap office chair and trying to fashion a pneumatically height-adjustable keyboard/mouse base, but other easier/cheaper suggestions are very welcome.
So, how do I like it? Well, the back pain lessened in one day, and is significantly reduced after four. I rarely find myself wanting to sit down. I’ve been standing for the last two hours straight, despite some knee pain from playing basketball the other day. I also feel like I’m more alert standing, less prone to drowsiness when I’m working early in the morning or late at night.
If you’re thinking about trying a standing workspace, some advice:
1) Experiment with different keyboard heights before deciding on a non-adjustable surface. Use books, shoeboxes, whatever, to find an optimal height that doesn’t put too much strain on your shoulders but keeps your wrists straight when typing. I wound up needing it a couple inches higher than I thought, so now I’m propping both my keyboard and mouse up with books.
2) Don’t lock your knees while standing, and keep your weight distributed evenly between both legs. Otherwise you’ll be causing more pain than you’re avoiding by not sitting.
3) Take breaks. At least five minutes every hour. Try AntiRSI to enforce this (if you’re on a Mac).
4) If you need inspiration for how to configure your workspace, check out Lifehacker’s featured workspaces. I’m hoping to find a keyboard stand solution here.
A friend and former roommate of mine, the Honorable Jim Gavin, writes two group e-mails every year: one on