One of the biggest changes I’ve made to my working environment in the past few years has been switching to a standing desk. I’ve been active in some fashion or another for most of my life, and yet I would spend 40+ hours every week hunched over my desk. My posture was suffering, and I decided to do something about it: I put together my own standing desk using parts from Ikea.
It’s been over a year now, and I don’t regret the switch. At the end of the day I’m a lot more tired, no doubt about it, but my posture has improved and I just feel… healthier. I realize that’s such a handy-wavy thing to say, but I’m sticking with it. If you ever venture to try your own standing desk, I believe you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
Striking a Balance
I may be painting a rosy picture of standing desks, but even I’ll admit they’re not without drawbacks. I mentioned being more tired, but for me, they go beyond that. What I noticed is that I had little trouble standing all day, I was also kind of cheating. I would frequently lean on my desk, and eventually as my legs would begin to tire, I would… how can I describe this… prop one leg against the other and stand on a single foot.
That’s pretty weird, right? I realize that as I’m typing these words, but that’s what I was doing. I think somehow I felt it was making the stand easier, when in reality I would just tire out one leg and then switch over and over again.
So… a few weeks ago I heard about a company called FLUIDSTANCE that designed a slick looking balance board for standing desks called The Level. To make a short story even shorter, I now own one and have been testing it for the past little while.
Here’s what it looks like fresh from the box.
The reason I ended up picking one up was that I had a simple theory: there’s no way I could stand on one foot on a balance board, and thus my weird issue would be solved. It turns out that I was right, but also that this balance board is awesome for a whole slew of other reasons.
Do you remember watching Back to the Future as a kid? Well, maybe you weren’t a kid, but I was. I loved the scene where Marty McFly zoomed around on a hoverboard, and I mean really, what kid wouldn’t love that? As an adult, I love it too, and you know what? The Level is my hoverboard. I love what I do for a living, but standing on this wobbly object makes it even more enjoyable. No joke.
I’m constantly switching my legs around, sometimes even making whooshing noises, much to my girlfriend’s dismay. I’m crazy, I admit, but if you try one of these standing desk balance boards, I promise you’ll do the same. They’re so much fun that no reasonable person would avoid this.
I could go on about the health benefits of standing on a “moving” surface all day, but I think you can well imagine. Instead I would like to finish by saying that if you’re already rocking a standing desk, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not owning a standing desk balance board like The Level.
Starting at $289 USD they aren’t exactly inexpensive, but it’s a small price to pay to have your very own hoverboard.
