Proof We Should All Listen to Jillian Michaels: Standing Desks Offer Unexpected Perk
Okay, remember last month when fitness queen Jillian Michaels told us all to just stand the heck up more? Well, it turns out she was really on to something. Not only are there physical benefits of standing up instead of sitting all day (extra calories burned, score!), but according to a new study out of Texas A&M, kicking your desk chair to the curb can make you WAY more productive at work, too. Talk about a win-win, huh?
So you’re probably thinking to yourself, Great, it’ll help me get through a few more emails each day — but that’s not enough to make me go out and buy a brand spankin’ new desk. But keep listening: According to the study, published in the journal IIE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors, a standing desk could up your productivity by — drumroll, please — a whopping 46 percent. Okay, yes, I’m a writer, so math isn’t my specialty, but I’m pretty sure 46 percent is fairly close to 50 percent and that seems like a pretty attractive upgrade in terms of work accomplished.
Here’s how the study went down: According to the press release, the researchers swung into a call center and split workers into two groups. The first group continued to sit while at work. The researchers went full-on Pimp My Desk on the second group’s workspaces, upgrading their old sit-down desks to desks that adjusted between a sitting and standing positions at the user’s convenience. Then, they tracked the employees successful calls per hour. While the first month showed little change, by the end of the sixth months, those using the standing desks were sitting for about 1.6 hours less than the other group and were, like I said, 46 percent more productive. Oh, and a bonus: The majority of the standing group reported decreased body discomfort at the end of the study.
So if you weren’t convinced to try a standing desk for the health benefits, and then you still weren’t convinced when freaking Jillian Michaels told you to stand up more, perhaps now you’ll finally make the switch — in the name of productivity. After all, a higher work output usually leads to a promotion right? And if nothing else, maybe you’ll get to duck out of the office a little earlier than usual.
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