I’ve been reading a lot about people standing while they work. Treadmill desks are becoming popular. Susan Orlean writes at one. Standing desks are also a thing. Arshad Chowdury has been using one for the past two years.
This isn’t new. Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up. (Wolfe was 6'6" and used the top of a refrigerator as his desk.) Winston Churchill, Leonardo Da Vinci, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Jefferson all stood, as well.
This got me thinking that maybe I should move my laptop over to the kitchen counter for awhile and see what it’s like to create standing up. Of course, I never seem to be in the same spot for too long these days. Right now I’m sitting at my daughter’s Tae Kwon Do class writing this on an iPad in my lap. In reality, I’m more like Agatha Christie, who didn’t even own a desk and worked wherever she could sit down.
The original article that got me thinking about this was 25 Productivity Secrets from History’s Greatest Thinkers.
Some interesting articles I stumbled upon afterward (the first two are long reads):
— The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers
— To Sit, to Stand, to Write
— 5 famous writers who stood while they worked.