(Belated) New Year’s resolution
It is still January and here comes my belated New Year’s resolution – stand more at work!
As a translator, I sit hours in front of a computer. Back pain is a trait of our profession. That’s why I have been using a height-adjustable desk for more than a decade. It works very well with my beloved saddle chair. But I admit that I rarely use it for actually standing at work.
There is a multitude of well-founded research out there to support the benefits of dynamic sitting. Some paper claims that standing time can run up to 50% (!) of entire daily worktime.
📕 So, to work standing is good for me but requires some practice. How can I train myself? I found a useful approach in the best-selling book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear which I read over the Christmas holidays based on the recommendation by my colleague.. Its core message is stated on the first chapter: If you want better results,
“forget about goals, focus on systems instead”.
⌛ As a first step, I bought a sand clock.
I do work standing occasionally but never know how long. And honestly, I cannot bother keeping a precise record. Here, I hope that my sand clock can help me out. The idea here is to make things visible, to make my progress measurable.
And I made it a rule: After fetching a cup of coffee (or a glass of water or whatever), I work standing. This is called “habit stacking” in the book.
My ambition for the time being is to turn over the sand clock ten times a day – starting with the smallest time span of 5 min. You can scale up the size your clock any time later.
The sand clock has been in action for a while this month. At first, I was afraid of losing a bit of concentration while standing. But I find it refreshing to work standing, especially in the late afternoon. So, this habit does me good and hopefully my customers, too. With regained creativity through standing, I hope to improve my output for my customers.
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