SteveStreeting.com

Laptops are great, of course, whether you’re travelling or just enjoying the flexibility of having a PC wherever you want in the house at any one time, instead of closeted in a fixed location. But if there’s one dimension in which they suck (barring upgradability – but then modern laptops are pretty nippy these days), it’s ergonomics. Laptops are excluded from the design standards that regular PCs have to adhere to, simply because it’s hard for them to comply within the form factor we expect.

I’m a little sensitive to ergonomics, having had bouts of RSI over the years, and of course my back problems.  However, I still love my laptops – particularly since right now the only Mac I have is a laptop, so that’s where all my testing for OS X has to happen. The reason I’m raising this today is that, despite having limited my laptop time in recent months because of my back, I decided it was feeling good enough in recent weeks to try to finish the OS X support for CMake this weekend. It took quite a lot of time over 2 days to get everything sorted out, but I did manage it, and was pretty happy about it. My back though – not so much; today it’s more painful than it’s been in a while.

The trouble is that I can either use the laptop on the dining room table, which places the keyboard and screen at about chest height – which strains my mid-back because I have to sit up pretty straight to use it (ie exactly what my physio says I shouldn’t do), or, I can use it at my stand-up desk or on my lap, which then hurts my upper back because you have to hunch your neck over quite far instead. For me, mid-to-upper back strain is the main problem, not lower back as is more common (trust me to be different), so this is straining the exact area I don’t want to.

Of course the usual way to resolve it is to use a laptop stand and connect a separate keyboard and mouse, but that pretty much defeats the object of having a laptop in the first place if you have to cart those things around & have cables trailing about. There are other more modest stands just for the laptop itself but I’m not entirely convinced about their effectiveness given how little they can change the configuration (if you’ve used one, please shout )

It would be nice if laptops could start trying to address this. Maybe incorporating some kind of telescopic housing for the LCD, so you can put the keyboard and screen at the right height simultaneously. The main challenges with that are strength, space requirements and the centre of gravity I guess, but it would be nice. Or, maybe a simpler approach of just a detachable screen with fold-out legs or something. Am I nuts?

My new chair arrived today, packed into a surprisingly small box thanks to the marvels of German engineering (or something). A deft bit of allen key action later, and it was ready to go. Initial impressions are that it’s going to take some getting used to. The gas lift does indeed go high enough to use with a standing height desk, and it’s very solidly built and very stable, which is good when you’re perched that high.

It’s adjustable in more ways than I can get my head around right now so will take some time to get right, and my jury-rigged elevated desk isn’t so great with this set-up since your legs are cramped by the original desk surface (which is now at thigh height), so I’ll need to look for a more permanent setup. And the saddle seat – well, it certainly does alter your posture so that it’s like a horse riding or skiing pose (bend zee knees!) rather than sitting, but the initial downside of the saddle-like configuration is that it can make your inner thighs a little sore to begin with – but at least that prompts a return to the standing posture. At least it doesn’t bounce around like a real horse does though – I know from experience how sore that can make you after a few hours! I’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and I have a hundred and one things to catch up on this week after last week’s unplanned diversions, so bear with me if I’ve missed things in the forum or am otherwise slow to respond. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to make up for the time lost in a short time, especially when my back still limits the amount of desk time I have available.

It’s been a whole week since I discarded my office chair and switched to a stand-up desk so, I’m guessing some of you are wondering how it’s gone.

Well, let’s start with the difficulties. Standing up for 8+ hours a day is tough on the feet, or at least on feet that have gotten used to taking it easy for most of the day – even with the odd break I’ve found my feet are extremely painful by the evening (those who work in retail are no doubt rolling their eyes by now and calling me a wuss).  Also, certain muscles (some in the back, some in the backs of the legs etc) that are not usually used for such long periods of time can get a bit tired after a whole week of doing it. At first, this made me think standing up was hurting my back, but it was really just a muscle fatigue issue and nothing like the back pain I get from my recurring problems. I’m sure my feet and muscles will toughen up with time though, once I become more accustomed to it. Obviously my Capisco will allow me to perch & rest for short periods at the right height once it arrives, but maybe it’s good that I’m having to take the tougher route initially.

So how about the benefits? So far, I’m really positive about this set-up. My back has been so much better this week; it’s felt much more stable and flexible, and first thing in the morning I’ve been less stiff. I feel much more energised too – standing up definitely improves my concentration and alertness, as well as not being so distracted by back pain, and having to get up to stretch all the time etc. In short, so far it’s fantastic, despite the sore feet, hamstrings and other muscles. I’m hoping this isn’t some kind of placebo effect and that long term, this is the way forward.

Based on what I’ve read though, it seems to make sense. Sitting down for long periods is said to have many detrimental effects on your body:

1. It puts anywhere up to 70% more strain on your back than standing or squatting, which are the 2 natural positions the human spine was actually designed for
2. It restricts the bloodflow to the legs, which as well as the DVT risks can make you more lethargic
3. It encourages sedentary behaviour – this is bad anytime, but in the case of backs it encourages dehydration of the disc walls, which can lead to stiff spinal segments (which can lead to instability)

Conversely, while working standing I’ve noticed these benefits:

1. Motion is built-in to your day – when you’re sitting down, you’re inclined not to move about much because it’s inconvenient to do so (beyond swiveling the chair). You generally need to have a reason to get up, and when you do so, the fact that your work can’t be done until you sit down again encourages you to minimise this time so you can get back to sitting down again to work. And for me with my back, each transition would involve stretching a bit when getting up, and spending some time getting settled comfortably back in the chair again. Having everything at a standing height completely eliminates this problem.
2. Seamless transitions – stepping away from the desk and back again incurs no ‘overhead’, in terms of needing to get out of the chair, get settled again afterward etc. Maybe it’s just a mental thing, but I found that when getting out of my chair, my ‘flow’ would often be interrupted, and I’d have to regain it when I got back again. This would discourage me from taking breaks, as well as penalising me (productivity-wise) when I did take them. Somehow, being in a standing position already seems to get rid of that, and I can happily walk away from the machine for a few minutes, come back to fix a build issue, wander away again to the bookshelf etc and never feel like my chain of thought is being interrupted. It’s like my day is altogether more fluid than it was before.
3. My ‘core stability’ muscles are being engaged pretty much all day to keep me upright, in varying configurations as I shift positions. For me, this seems much like doing mild exercise all day for the most important muscles when it comes to back trouble, which I’m sure has led to my back feeling less ‘fragile’. Usually I do specific exercises designed to stretch & strengthen these muscles without straining my back (which I’m still doing), but it appears simply standing around for a long time achieves much the same thing.
4. My concentration is much better. I’m sure this is down to a lot of factors – less pain (which is always distracting, even when you’ve learned to live with it in the background most of the time), better blood-flow, more actively maintained posture etc. Whatever blend of things it is, I’ve felt more productive and positive in the last week than I have at any time in the last 3 months.
5. I seem to need to drink a lot more water than usual, which is a good sign, since as noted many back problems result from a dehydration of your spinal discs (caused by compression and lack of activity over a long period). That probably helps concentration too.

So, while I’m nursing sore feet and muscles, I’m feeling good about this experiment, and hopeful that it might lead to a magical situation where I can both spend time at a computer and keep my back healthy. That’s nirvana for me, especially after a rocky few months. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I wish I knew 10 years ago what I know now, that no matter how expensive your chair, sitting in it for 10-12+ hours a day is very likely to screw your back up eventually. In my experience obsessing over the ergonomic aspects of your sitting position does no more than delay the problem (I’ve certainly done loads of adjustments over the last 5 years, and only succeeded in slowing the degeneration), and the only real answer is to eliminate the sitting position altogether. We apes just weren’t engineered to sit in chairs!

I’ve been thinking for a while that I needed to get a new chair for my home office – the one I have now is 15 years old and doesn’t even have a lumbar support (so I supplement it with cushions). However, good chairs are expensive, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted – I had a more modern chair when I used to work in an office, and that still didn’t stop me getting back problems, and most recently I’ve had thorasic-region problems which aren’t directly addressed by a lumbar support anyway.

The issue is that sitting places far more stress on the back than standing/walking, and most back problems are made worse by immobility. I can definitely attest to both of these assertions from my recent experience, it’s just that addressing those issues has meant interruptions to my work schedule, a general loss of productivity, and some frustration at not being able to do all that I want to do.

I want to thank Martin for triggering off a thought chain last week about stand-up desk set-ups, which I hadn’t heard much about before. People like Churchill used these all their lives, where you stand at the desk most of the time, or perhaps use a tall chair like a draughtman’s stool if you want to take the weight off your legs for a while. As well as the general position being better for the back, you’re more likely to move about as a matter of course while standing up, and many people have cited productivity gains because the posture makes them more alert.

Finding these set-ups is another matter though. Most of the dedicated set-ups are rather old-fashioned, podium/writing desk sort of style, and not really the configuration I’m looking for, but a number of people around the internet have built their own, either by modding existing desks or going the whole hog. There are also height-adjustable desks that you can buy, a small number of which go up to the sort of height I need to stand at (about 1m), but unfortunately no-one I’ve talked to so far seems to do them over here; the best I found so far locally was an adjustable one to 85cm, which is still too low for standing at, and a mainland UK provider that won’t ship to the Channel Islands for fear of the mechanism being damaged in transit. I’ll keep looking, but I think I’m going to try retrofitting my existing desk instead, perhaps starting with a rough setup of a few bits of wood to make a raised surface on top of what I have, and refining it later if it works.

I still want a better chair though, since I don’t want to stand all of the day. The draughtsman’s stool idea isn’t bad, but I thought I could do better. Then I found lots of good reviews of the HAG Capisco. It’s pretty odd looking, compared to more traditional ergonomic chairs like the Herman Miller Aeron and will undoubtedly take some getting used to, but the key thing about it is that it’s a ’saddle seat’ -  your legs are much more vertical, which puts your spine in a far better position than regular sitting does. The other nice thing about the Capisco is that you can reverse it and sit backwards if you need to lean forward with extra support (that’s why the back is such a weird shape – it’s a combination of back and arm-rests for both set-ups. The seat design also makes you use your muscles more actively which encourages more mobility. Back sufferers seem to be raving about it, which is what attracted me to it. Finally, it has the option to go high enough that you can use it with a standing-height desk as well as a regular height desk, which ticks the final box if I intend to turn my desk into a standing area too.

Anyone had any experience trying stand-up desking or the Capisco? Unfortunately again there are no places locally I can try out the Capisco, although reports from users on the web suggest that’s not a good way to evaluate it anyway, since it seems weird for a few days until you get used to it, so I’m probably going to have to order blind.