Hemingway served as the inspiration for my inspire-er

I had a stiff neck this week end, as I often get.  I tend to carry all of my stress and tension in my shoulders and neck and this creates all sorts of headache, shoulder and neck pain and stiff neck situations for me.  One of the reasons I began yoga was to try and work on this issue a bit and although its helping, I still tend to abuse myself when I work.  The hours and hours spent alternating between my jewelry desk and my laptop result in my looking down most of the time I'm working.

I have recently noticed that switching from a desktop to a laptop has drawn my eyes lower down while working and as a result I look down even more now.  Even though I have a 20" mac flat screen monitor sitting on my desk just begging for me to use it, but I hardly plug into it so little good it does me.

Yesterday I was asked how I hurt my neck, and after I explained all of the above, I was given a bit of food for thought.  It seems that the gentleman whom I was speaking is a writer and not only experienced neck issues from toiling away the hours writing at his desk, but had developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists which required surgery.  After his recovery, he decided to rethink how he worked to prevent further injury.  He heard about Hemingway always standing to write and decided to give it a try.  It took some time to get used to, but he was sold when he realized he could still write for 4 to 5 hours at a time while standing and was not hurting himself in the process.  After this realization, he proceeded to change his entire office over to standing height and never looked back.

Apparently, this is not a new concept and after a quick google search, I found all sorts of people who talk about working while standing.  If you're interested, I enjoyed this article about it.  From reading the comments, I am hoping that my work with yoga has helped teach me how to stand better then I sit, as really its all apples and oranges if you're posture is bad when standing.  It also seems that alternating sitting and standing while working is ideal.

I am incredibly intrigued by this idea.  I always have stood to paint, I fill orders standing at a counter and this winter began standing to sew as I used the order filling station to set up the sewing machine on.  It actually will be  easy to try as having that counter means that I already have a suitable place to put my computer.  Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my big days in the studio...I typically work about 17 hours on those days, with a few breaks to walk the dog, eat and exercise.  It's the perfect time to try out a new process as I can both immerse myself in a new method and have ample time to get used to it.  Right now I work in my studio while standing maybe 5% of the time.  I think I'll aim to adjust that percentage to 50% and see how my neck fares at that point.

Do you work standing up?  What are your thoughts on doing office and computer work this way?