I Am Not A Programmer

I've been using this setup for the last three-ish years, and it works great. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

A couple years ago my co-worker and I each built the $22 IKEA standing desk from iamnotaprogrammer.com[1]. We also each got a nice standing mat and stool (about $100 each), and I got a monitor mount (about $50). It's been excellent. I'd say I spend about half my time standing and half sitting on the stool. For me, rather than losing focus when I'm standing, sometimes I'll just pace around my office a bit, which I've found helps me think a lot, and obviously helps keep the blood flowing and the muscles loose. [1] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

I would also recommend a Bekant regular desk and this setup: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

wish these guys all the success in the world, but this is radically cheaper, high quality, and works great from personal first hand experience: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

Just to toss it out there, because I also drool over awesome chairs (and lament their price tag): I recently picked up a standing desk (geekdesk). I still love my Steelcase, but the standing desk is a bigger improvement on the work day. This isn't even a close fight. I would not hesitate to drop the cash on a standing desk and buy a cheapo chair if that's what the budget dictated. YMMV, of course. At least try the Ikea standing desk hack (http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html) before you jump.

Ran in to similar issues. Not sure if you saw my article, but the forked version of s3cmd I mention handles invalidation excellently. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Jekyll-S3-Cloudfront-Aname-Root.html

You really need one customized for you. It's probably worse to have a misconfigured standing desk than it is to have a correctly configured sitting desk. I use this one that I built for $22: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html Love it. Use it every day at work, and days when I have to sit all day (Traveling, in meetings, whatever)... I feel AWFUL at the end of the day.

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure. Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years. During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past.…

I will chime in here and say that I found an inexpensive standing desk implementation here: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

I used this and found it to satisfactory, assuming you use a monitor and a keyboard. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html If you arrange the cables right, switching position takes only a minute.

A better, cheaper option is to build your own: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

That's pretty much what the author did [1]. He just screwed on a shelf on the coffee table to support the keyboard and mouse. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

Apparently Ikea has a powered standing desk that costs ~$500 http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikeas-own-standing-desk.html I haven't been able to find one yet.

This might be pretty obvious, but if you forward personal email to a google apps account a lot of stuff like this can happen. The other way, too. If you forward email from a google apps account to gmail (or another google apps account), funky stuff happens. Colin from customer.io wrote about this once... http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Dont-Forward-Google-Apps-to-Gmail.html

I use the one described here ( http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html ): an Ikea "Lack" table with a shelf attached to it for the keyboard. I have a normal laptop stand on the left side of my desk where I set, and one those Lack tables on the right side with a monitor on it. When I want to stand, I just move my keyboard and mouse to the shelf and setup my laptop to use the monitor instead of its own screen. I think the Lack table also exists in a version that is twice as wide, but I'm not sure.

I think I might try out this option next time I happen to drop by IKEA. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

The "Standdesk 2200" [1] is similar and seems easier to make, if you have access to an IKEA. [1] http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

Look into getting a fatigue mat. I had the exact same issue when I started, and standing on the mat helps reduce the soreness. edit: I used http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html to get a standing desk for cheap

I've been using an Ikea standing desk [1] off and on for a year and a half but most recently all day for the past two months. I definitely feel better overall (energy, alertness, etc) vs sitting. I have a trackball mouse and Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard in addition to a raised external monitor and laptop stand for ergonomics. The first two weeks my legs were very tired at the end of the day but now I'm used to it. I have a padded mat and use a chair to kneel on to switch up my posture and shift weight throughout the day. Now that I'm adjusted I don't think I'll ever go back to sitting. 1 - http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

I built one of these: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html and I've been using it since early July and spend most of my day at it. It has significantly helped how my back feels by the end of the day. It's plenty sturdy (I actually bought two of the tables: one for my monitor and keyboard, the other I cut the legs down to the same height as the keyboard on the other table. I put my laptop on this one). I also have a Steelcase Leap chair I bought in February which helped with the back too. I still use it for writing in my notebook every couple of hours. I stand barefoot on a cheap backpacking foam pad which I cut in half. I keep a pair of flipflops at my desk if I need to run around the office. Every so often I'll do some leg stretches. I'm considering buying a quality antifatigue mat, but I'm making this work for now.

Check this awesome (and cheap) design: http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dollars.html

I found a blog post a few months back that made a lot of sense to me - basically they said that Burnout is caused by resentment. The more you resent your work (i.e. working too many hours, dealing with idiots, anything frustrating), the faster your will burnout. You should check out the post, its pretty short. http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html