Improve Productivity Via Standing Desks and Working While You Stand

How are you working on the days when you are not moving about, not traveling, and staying put in your home office? These are the days you need to care about how prolonged sitting affects your productivity and how standing can help.

Working while you stand is a very important skill to learn – and you may soon understand why.

Standing desks can result in productivity gains at unproductive times when you have poorer attention levels and bodily discomfort. When you stand while working, you can relieve pain from sitting, push through, and work for a longer period of time with increased mental focus.

One common excuse is ‘well I don’t have a standing desk and it’s too expensive’. Fine, I understand that concern, but there are ways to get around this issue:

You could use a cheaper alternative. Get a laptop stand, or get a standing desk converter which is something you place atop your current desk to elevate your laptop. Learn how to use these tools. They can be very useful if you just want to read something or watch an educational video while you copy or type notes onto your phone. If you want to type, sure, it might be a little harder with these tools. You might need to invest in an external keyboard or keyboard tray, or you must ensure that the desk you are working on is high enough to accommodate your wrists for comfortable typing while you stand.

You can also work while on the move. You can stand while you work on your smartphone.

By the end of this article, you will know exactly what to do – how to tactically use standing to hack your way into productivity.

Standing Desks: A Productivity Booster

Doubt that working at a standing desk may not be as productive as it sounds? There are studies that prove otherwise.

Employees at the Draugiem Group tracked how productivity relates to the time spent sitting versus standing. They found that productivity was boosted by 10% while using standing desks.

In another study, not only were call center employees 45% more productive on a daily basis when using standing desks, their productivity also increased over time, from 23% in the first month to 53% in the next 6 months of using standing desks.

This is a staggering improvement and shows that people take time to adjust to a standing desk. If you can persevere through the initial discomfort, eventually you will be able to stand for longer periods and be more productive.

Let’s look into the ways standing at work improves productivity.

1. Better Mental Focus

Standing keeps you energized and stabilizes your energy levels. For instance, standing after lunch reduces your blood sugar spikes compared to sitting. As such, you will be more clear-headed for work.

Isn’t this convenient? Standing can be a “habit hack” that instantly fixes your drowsiness (to an extent), during the times you accidentally ate poorly, got in a bad mood, or are feeling tired.

Standing sends an immediate signal to your body that it is time to “switch on”, get busy, and get things done. When you stand, this helps blood flow and helps your brain to receive oxygen, making you more alert.

Besides, standing deters unproductive multitasking.

Sitting makes you feel comfortable – it is easy to fall into distractions like surfing websites and using social media. In contrast, when you stand up, your body creates a sense or urgency that literally puts a halt to the non-relevant Internet browsing and procrastination.

Have you heard of someone browsing social media and online stores for 1-2 hours at a standing desk?

Probably not – standing just isn’t that comfortable.

2. Time Pressure Advantage

Not many people can work at a standing desk for long hours. But your body’s inability to stand for that long can be turned into an advantage.

In a smaller time window when we use a standing desk, we are forced to concentrate better to complete tasks.

Instead of losing track of time, here are examples of using standing as a time pressure advantage on “everyday” tasks that we do:

Reading/Research: Limit reading and browsing time to 30 minutes to an hour, freeing up time for doing the actual work.
Learning about a new skill or subject: Spending 30 minutes at a standing desk can help you concentrate. You drop the excuse that you are a beginner or that it is OK to take your time.
Emails: Emails can be the most time-consuming and “busy” aspect of your day. Batch all your email replies into a smaller window of time when you are working at your standing desk, and move on quickly.

3. Persevere Without Stopping

When you are in deep work, you would hate to be interrupted. Yet, every person who sits working 2-4 hours at a time has experienced pain creeping in at times that interrupt their work.

When your back, neck, and legs ache, it is annoying and sometimes, you will be forced to take a break away from your desk.

When you have a standing desk, you can just switch over from sitting to standing.

Doesn’t sound like a revelation, but this allows you to stretch your legs and relieve the pain caused by long hours of sitting.

While doing so, you are still productively working on your screens and typing away. Standing is a simple, straightforward “hack” that lets you work longer and get more done.

4. Tackle Quick Tasks such as Your Email, Calendar, or Shopping Cart

There are times when you are not working but need to jump on and off the computer for some quick tasks. Perhaps it is to send an email, rearrange your calendar, shop for something online, or google something.

Fairly speaking, these are brief tasks suitable to be done quickly while standing, as this will minimize the odds of you getting too comfortable and distracted.

The next time you need to shop online, try standing up and see how it makes you feel. I doubt you will take your own sweet time to browse the catalogs.

Standing desks are great for squeezing out the extra work during your evening or non-work hours. In the evenings, you are lethargic and easily distracted. A standing desk is a great option for your leftover, extra tasks that can be done in 1-2 hours or less.

How to Work While Standing for Maximum Productivity

Now that you know standing desks are more than just the hype, it is time to look at organizing your workday around using a standing desk. After all, if you build or buy a standing desk, it is a long-term investment that you would want to maximize.

Here are the best tips on maximizing productivity while standing or at a standing desk.

Work on the go

First, let’s acknowledge the fact that you don’t necessarily have to work at your desk ALL the time. If you are capable of getting out of your chair and continuing your work on your smartphone, then you do not have to be chained to your desk.

Whenever you feel tired of sitting, you could simply get out of your apartment, office, cafe, or wherever you are at. You could hop on a train or bus, stand, and continue typing away on your mobile phone. But you might need an extra pair of earbuds or noise-canceling headphones if you are easily distracted by external noise and stimuli.

Plan your work: What work could you not do on your phone, and what work could you accomplish while on the move?

To work on the move, you often just need productivity software with app versions and an internet connection (though some apps can work without one and sync when you are back online later). Apps such as Google Docs and Google Sheets make productivity so much easier and more accessible wherever you are.

But if your work must be performed on a laptop or monitor, then schedule such work to be done while sitting. Perhaps when you are on the move later in the day, you could work on something else, such as calendar scheduling, brainstorming on a certain problem, replying to messages, email, and so on and so forth. Not every task requires tremendous brainpower or a large 13-inch or 24-inch screen.

Develop the ability to work while you are on the move, you will be a lot healthier, and possibly a little more productive overall.

Make adjustments, plan your work, and adapt to mobile working.

Recognize that some tasks are better done while seated

Recognize that some work tasks are better done while seated. If you are looking at standing as a cure-all for productivity, you will be disappointed.

In fact, it is not advisable to stand for more than four hours a day, as recommended based on the Prolonged Standing Strain Index. Otherwise, you run the risk of suffering leg and back pain.

Essentially, you want to be seated for tasks that require a greater deal of focus and concentration.

There are some types of work you simply would struggle to “power through” while standing for hours at a time. Sitting enables fuller relaxation of your body, so sitting helps with deep work. Your body needs to be fully relaxed, in order to engage your best cognitive capacities for completing a difficult report, critical analysis, solving a programming problem, and acing other complex tasks.

This article was originally published on unboundist.com. If it is now published on any other site, it was done without permission from the copyright owner.

Standing suits certain types of work tasks

So what are the tasks best to be performed at a standing desk? Bear in mind that most of us would stand for only short periods of time (switching between standing and sitting), especially when we are not yet used to standing at work.

Hence, while standing, it makes sense to tackle tasks that require short bursts of effort, or tasks that require less concentration to complete.

Based on this rationale, there are four categories of work that can be best suited for standing desk work:

Communication tasks: Communication tasks involve skills like teamwork, negotiation, writing, and verbal communication.
Managerial tasks: These are “higher-level” tasks that involve organizing people, systems and making decisions.
Repetitive tasks: Examples are manually keying data into a spreadsheet and sending/answering emails.
Learning tasks: Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study.

Certain managerial and communicative work consists of multiple quick and short activities that can be done standing up or walking around. Certain specialized tasks such as making sales and networking calls require you to “think on your feet”; standing, walking or pacing can be really useful. Likewise, for repetitive and learning tasks, you can “blitz” through them while working at a standing desk without getting too distracted or comfortable.

Work while standing at certain times of your day

You can change the way you work depending on the time of day.

As many standing desk users have found:

After lunch: Standing after lunch reduces blood sugar spikes and helps you to “switch on” with a sense of urgency to get tasks done. You also feel less sleepy and a tad more energized.

Evenings: Perhaps you do not have much brain power left in the evenings. It helps to stand while you work in the evenings to “blitz” through any leftover or maintenance tasks.

One method is to batch all your ‘shallow’ work into your ‘standing’ block of time. Such work generally requires less brainpower. When you are tired of sitting, you tackle such work all at once and power through them.

You might think this is too much planning. But even without structuring your sitting versus standing time, you can become more productive by simply switching between sitting and standing whenever you feel tired. It’s not that hard.

Stand properly while you work

The skill of standing properly is underrated when it comes to working at a standing desk. Standing for hours at a desk means that we could risk developing foot, leg, and back pain, and other problems involving circulation and varicose veins.

Some people use an anti-fatigue mat to be placed under their feet when standing. A thick yoga mat might work as well. If you wear shoes or sandals rather than work barefoot, you might not need a mat, provided that your shoe/sandal has enough support and padding.

Even without the proper tools, what you can do is switch between sitting and standing frequently. Every 30 minutes, you could sit down, stretch, change positions, and move about. This reduces potential problems that prolonged standing can bring.

Be prepared that if you are just starting out, your body may take 2 weeks or more to adapt to working at a standing desk.

In the meantime, it is possible to improve your ability to stand for longer periods of time by using strength training and flexibility exercises.

Conclusion

No doubt, the potential for standing desks to improve productivity is underrated. Now, you know the ways in which standing at work can defeat the many roadblocks that surface during the day.

Should you decide to invest in a standing desk (or an alternative) for your home office, I’ve discussed how to utilize standing in ways that are conducive to productivity.

Enjoy standing as you work.

Unboundist