My Pier One + IKEA Mashup

This post is an update from a previous post last week, after I had reorganized my office to be based on a stand-while-you-work model.  The health benefits to this model are numerous and artistically summarized here.

Last weekend, I did something significant…I reorganized my home office.

This was quite the accomplishment, especially given the fact that the week before I reengineered my border device to run DD-WRT.  Cables were strewn about the floor and unrecognizable power supplies lay hidden like land mines beneath the blue, orange, and yellow Cat5 foliage.  It was chaos!

I reorganized my office so that I would be forced to stand at my desk.  This was done using two IKEA LACK side tables, purchased for $12 apiece last year.  Simple, cheap, and temporary.  I didn’t want to get too financially invested in an idea I wasn’t convinced of.

Continue Reading…

Take baby steps...

I remember a summer camp that I went to between high school and college – Summit Ministries.  This was a camp for nerds.  We attended lectures on leadership, cultural paradigms, and world religions…heavy stuff, to say the least.

Dr. David Nobel, the leader of the organization, would continually say, “If you want to be a leader, you have to be a reader.”  That was all the impetus I needed back then.  Of course, I was single, carefree, without a job, and with plenty of time on my hands.

How do you make time for reading in the “real world”?  That is, the world of full-time jobs, work deadlines, home obligations, bills to pay, and errands to run?

Robert Bruce, a full-time web writer for Dave Ramsey and a book blogger at 101 Books shares some excellent advice on making time in your schedule for reading. His personal goal is pretty epic.  He is reading Time Magazine‘s Top 100 English-Speaking Novels Since 1923. Check it out!

Continue Reading…

Makeshift standing desk.

I came across a post on Michael Hyatt‘s intentional leadership blog this morning about the ergonomics (or lack thereof) of sitting in an office chair for more than six hours a day.

Here are just a few figures:

• Sitting 6+ hours per day makes you up to 40% likelier to die within 15 years than someone who sites less than 3.  Even if you exercise.
• As soon as you sit, electrical activity in the leg muscles shuts off.
• Not only that, but the enzymes that help break down fat drop 90%!
• People with sitting jobs have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease as people with standing jobs.

Reading those figures motivated me to reorganize my working space downstairs.  With some help from my lovely wife and her eye for a “zen look” (as I call it), my office has been radically transformed.
Continue Reading…