Last year, I remodelled my home office, and setup two (self-built) standing desks (post).
Last week – you guessed it – I added an under-the-desk treadmill. And today was the second day I spent most of the working day on it. Here are my observations:
- All walking speeds below about 2-2.5 mi/hour are fine. It takes a little bit of time to get used to it, but if I keep my wrists on the keyboard’s wrist rest, typing accuracy is not an issue. I haven’t tried doing precision work with the mouse yet.
- I get hungry more often during the day!
- Corollary: better have a big water bottle close by at all times.
- Walking actually feels more natural than standing all day. Which, of course, feels much more natural than sitting all day! I guess I am making progress.
- I have no issue walking all the time. After dinner, I am possibly feeling a bit tireder than I otherwise would, but that could have others reasons (today’s heat, not having slept enough last night, …)
- It absolutely requires suitable walking/running pants, and no, those kinds are usually not approved as business casual. (Otherwise your skin is going to get sore.) When I started after college, business clothes at BMW were jacket and tie. That went to business-casual button-down shirts and slacks once I got to California, and later jeans and polo shirts, and now, well! There are advantages at working from home :-)
BIggest complaint: it is too complicated to move the laptop from one desk to the other. Too many cables to unplug and replug. I have a separate external keyboard, mouse and monitor on both desks, and local USB hubs, so I don’t have to move any of those. But there’s still 1) power, 2) HDMI, 3) USB and 4) Ethernet to deal with. And the peripherals plugged into the USB hubs are not the same (e.g. the inkjet only speaks USB, headset, scanner). Oh, and the analog audio for the speakers in the room can only be plugged in from one desk.
Summary: so far, so good. I recommend it. My son has high expectations for me how much fitter and trimmer I’m going to be. We’ll see.