Standing desks at workplaces are becoming increasingly prevalent. Despite complaints about aching legs and strain on spines, more and more people are choosing them. The pay-off is just not in health benefits but also in productivity.
An average person sits for approximately twelve hours a day. The doctors are warning that sitting is the new smoking.
In the most clicked article on standing desks, Cia Bernales writes that she used to have tight shoulders, lower back pains, and bad posture. Now she is not slouching, walks around the office more, and is more productive.
The advice to make sales calls while standing up has been around for a long time. Now there are calls for stand-up meetings and stand-up schools.
According to Andrew Knight, Professor at Olin Business School, groups are more creative and collaborative when they work standing up.
“The participants wore small sensors around their wrists to measure “physiological arousal” — the way people’s bodies react when they get excited. When a person’s arousal system becomes activated, sweat glands around the feet and hands release bursts of moisture. The sensors pass a small current of electricity through the skin to measure these moisture bursts.
Knight and Baer found that the teams who stood had greater physiological arousal and less idea territoriality than those in the seated arrangement. Members of the standing groups reported that their team members were less protective of their ideas; this reduced territoriality led to more information sharing and higher quality videos.”
Science News: Standing up gets groups more fired up for teamwork
“Seeing that the physical space in which a group works can alter how people think about their work and how they relate with one another is very exciting.” — Andrew Knight.
Many artists are known to express themselves better while standing up. Violinists, guitarists, and trumpeters all perform while standing up because you are holding your instrument upright when you’re standing. You are connected, expanded, tall, wide, round, inflated, supported, grounded, and free!
Ulrike Selleck, a classical singer, says standing is the best position to create beautiful, strong, and resonant sound because you are rooted in the earth through your legs. You stand like a tree, immovable throughout the storm, or the scales or coloratura or high notes or low notes, or interminably long phrasing, swooping melodies, or intricate lyrics.
Comedians perform standing up, and artists draw and paint standing up, then why don’t writers write standing up?
Most of us struggle to stay up with new ideas when we sit in front of the computer after a day’s work.
Our bodies in sedentary mode give the shut-down signal to our brains.
One way for writers to unlock creativity and break out of the too-tired-to-write routine could write standing up.
I will certainly test the theory next month, writing 1667 words a day (50,000 in a month) while participating in NaNoWriMo 2020.