Ben Crair rails against the growing enthusiasm for standing during work, especially among writers:
Of course the long, stationary workdays of most Americans are unhealthy. The solution should not be to sit less, but to work less. If sitting is as bad as the doctors say—and I’m sure it is!—then why not prescribe longer lunch breaks, shorter hours, and more vacation? You can still be chained to a standing desk. Is it any surprise that its biggest fans are the paternalist creeps of Silicon Valley?
Along similar lines, Trent Wolbe, who suffered severe carpal tunnel syndrome, waged an “ergonomics war” that ended in epiphany:
On a hardware level, I had found nirvana: the Kinesis keyboard, Evoluent mouse (supplemented by an Innovera wrist gel-pad), and my main man FREDERIK are still with me today. But this was all very American-capitalist-consumerist of me: I was trying to buy a way around my problem as opposed to treating it at its source. Although they were drastically diminished, I was still experiencing pangs of discomfort every day. To get my computer habit to a truly sustainable place, I just had to stop being online so much! …
[E]very aspect of my life was mediated by a mouse and keyboard: the internet is a quick and easy medium for working most of the time and chatting with friends or watching YouTube the rest of the time. But my body was sending me an excruciatingly clear signal that being chained to a console wasn’t right for me.
And so I began the process of distancing myself from the console. I cut back drastically on Gchat, stopped casually spending time on Facebook, ceased infinitely scrolling through miles of Twitter trash. I actively avoid broadcasted content: news I’m not close to, products I don’t need to buy, LOLcats that have already harvested their fair share of LOLs. More than anything, just chilling out a little bit online has shown me the true way to ergonomic freedom. I do inefficient stuff like go for walks and call people instead of emailing them. I spend a lot more time with my cat, who is actually pretty LOL if you get to know her well enough.
Usually our health problems have simple answers: eat less, move more, relax. It’s a pervasive truth that I wish I had accepted before I spent all that time and money trying to figure out how to make it not feel like I had juvenile arthritis.
tl;dr: U got carpalz? Stand to type, get vertical mouse and keyboard, chill IRL instead of online.
The Dish 