Here's a very poor photo of my ultra-inexpensive standing desk solution: A $20 IKEA coffee table and some rubber furniture pads. It works surprisingly well and is just the right hight for the monitor, but it puts my keyboard an inch or two higher than I'd like. I have an old keyboard tray that I'm going to try to attach to remedy that, but I have some concerns as to whether it'll work. The coffee table feels like it's made of compressed balsa wood it's so light, so I don't know if there's enough wood to actually support the keyboard tray. The other difficulty is that they keyboard tray is a very robust one from 3M and I think it weight just about as much as the coffee table. I could easily see the tray either pulling the screws out, or tipping the table over when it's extended and my hands are resting on it.
The bottoms of the legs are unfinished compressed particleboard and I was concerned about them scratching my primary desk surface, so I scrounged some square rubber furniture pads from another piece of furniture for the time being. I think they help keep the coffee table from sliding around on the desk, too. The desk is a tiny bit wobbly front-to-back if I purposefully shake it, but normal typing and mousing doesn't cause any noticeable movement. Again, this isn't comparable to a $700 purpose-made standing desk, but for an experiment in standing it's just the right level of investment.
But why a standing desk in the first place? My buddy Tim beat me to the punch in getting one setup, but I'd been reading about the benefits of standing up while working for quite a while. It's been a pretty popular topic amongst folks who follow the Paleo lifestyle. I also had a chance to try a standing desk for a few days while at a customer's offices and I enjoyed the change. Tim's creative use of a couple of bookshelves got me seriously thinking about it, and when I ran across a good looking standing desk over at IKEA hackers I browsed around IKEA's website until I found my coffee table solution.
So far I can say that my heels are a bit sore, so it's going to take a while to work up to standing all day. Right now I find that I still prefer to be seated to read, but writing or otherwise working seems to go well while standing. I seem to be more focused and productive while standing, but it could be an example of the Hawthorne effect for all I know. Or, maybe I'm just eager to get the work done so that I can get off my feet. I'll stick with this setup for a few more weeks and see.
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