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"I ♥ 2 move it move it"

The photo is of the motivational sticker on the top of the desk which for some reason always makes me inwardly chuckle and think of dancing lemurs…

It says on my CV and on my Linked In profile that I am firmly committed to leading by example—which I am—but for the last year I have been running my business hunched over a lap top on the only table we have in the house, which apart from being very bad for my back and wrists, is very inconvenient as we all need to eat at the same table several times a day!

I have finally managed to clear a space, acquire a free second-hand desk and chair (always trying to reduce my environmental impact), buy a new sit-stand riser and get my work station properly set up. My osteopath (at Sneyd Park Osteopaths ) recommended a sit-stand desk to help manage a long term back problem which is made worse by sitting for long periods of time and although I’d heard of sit-stand desks, I’d never actually seen one. After a bit of googling, I discovered you can buy a ‘riser’ and put it on top of a normal desk to turn it into sit-stand one, the first website which came up was sit-stand.com and as they had good reviews and are based in Swindon (I like to support other local businesses when I can), I bought a Yo-Yo Desk Mini . It was delivered in two days and came with its own screwdriver and instructions so after about 10 minutes of DIY (about my maximum limit!) I was ready to go.

I have been really impressed with how easy it is to use and how quickly I can turn it from a sitting desk to a standing one, just press two lever style handles and the whole thing moves smoothly up and down. My only minor grumble was that a standard size wireless keyboard wouldn’t fit far enough back on the keyboard tray so I could fit my wrists onto it as well, a problem easily solved by a trip to my local Maplin store to buy a smaller keyboard (this one if you are interested)

Like most consultants, I end up sitting in a variety of places at a variety of desks and chair combinations so I really like having a proper work space at home and I love the flexibility of being able to stand up and sit down comfortably for doing different things – I find standing up suits tasks needing short bursts of concentration such as checking and sorting emails (and also prevents procrastination and too much time wasting on clicking on random internet links) whereas sitting down suits me more for report writing and planning projects.

Have a look at Get Britain Standing and see whether a sit-stand riser would suit you and your work environment!

P.S. I haven’t received any incentive from sit-stand.com for writing this blog post, I have just been really impressed by this product and really like the potential it has to get all of us moving more and sitting less.

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