This is Technology Bytes, episode 51, for February 25th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week I’m diving into not high tech, but still useful tech, and something that’s been around for some time and just never really been in my life.
And this week it became that, and I am looking forward to using it more often and having it available as I go through the balance of my work life.
And what is that, you say?
Well, it’s a sit-stand desk.
Some may argue that a sit-stand desk is not technology, and I’m not sure I’m prone to argue with that too much because it doesn’t seem all that much of a technological barrier being broken or anything like that.
But when it’s related to our personal health, and we know that we spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, it can be important.
And depending on what kind of desk you get, there can be quite a bit of technology in it.
So the desk that I got, well, that the owner of our company purchased for me, is a very simple sit-stand desk.
I think he got it from Amazon.
And only $100 plus, not too much more than that, so that’s not all that expensive.
And it is quite small.
It’s probably, I don’t know, 40 inches wide, maybe a foot and a half deep.
No, it’s got to be more than that.
Maybe two feet deep.
It just really isn’t all that big.
But what it does do is it holds my laptop, my MacBook Air.
It holds my iMac, and it holds my iPad.
All three of those screens can be facing me.
I was sitting at a desk that didn’t really work for my setup because it had an elevated corner that my monitor apparently is supposed to sit on, but it made it too high out of my eyesight, and it felt like I was always looking up, which I didn’t really like.
So I’ve had my MacBook Air to the left, and it is on a riser.
I can’t remember what the name of it is, but it’s from 12 South.
It’s been very nice.
And then to the right, just a little bit, is my iMac.
And if I put my iPad in the mix, it’s even further to the right, so I have no screen that is directly in front of me.
So on this sit-stand desk, my iMac gets to sit directly in front of me, and then I have the MacBook Air to the left and the iPad to the right, and I can use those as the secondary screens for whatever work that I am doing at the time.
So I really like that setup first.
And then this particular sit-stand desk is motorized, so there’s some technology for you.
And it has memory settings, so then you can hit a button and it puts it at one position.
You hit another button, it puts it at the other position.
And this desk actually has three positions available.
So my sit position is number one, my stand position is number three, and at the moment I don’t have anything at number two because I’m not sure what there is in the middle.
I don’t have a bar stool, I have an office chair, so that’s the sit version.
I have legs that make me stand, so that’s the stand version.
I’m not 100% sure what the second position is even for, maybe if I had to share a desk with somebody, but it is very nice.
And let me tell you a little bit about how I will use it and plan to continue to use it.
So at my particular job at the moment, I have a morning routine where I fill out information from the production of the day before.
So I’m looking at what we accomplished and how much we accomplished, and then I keep data on that, how much per hour, how many per person, those kind of things.
And then I also enter in what our production capacity looks like in the terms of people.
So I will break down the different functional areas of production and say, I’ve got three people doing this today, I’ve got five people doing this today, I’ve got seven people doing this today.
And so then it kind of gives me an idea of my work distribution and where the load is.
And then, of course, I can move people around and I don’t always change the spreadsheet.
It’s really kind of where I start.
And it allows me to see over time if the people doing a certain function have a similar output on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and I track all of that.
So that is generally a sit-down experience where I’m looking at two screens.
I’ve got my MacBook Air screen on the left that has the data that I need.
I’ve got my iMac in the middle now, which is very nice, which has the spreadsheet open where I enter that data.
And in general, that becomes a sit-down experience.
And then at the end of the day, I do a similar thing looking at what was accomplished, because some of the data resets itself through the night, and so I need to make sure I capture that before I go home at the end of the day.
And that in itself is also a sit-down experience.
I have to do some replacement orderings if something got messed up and those kind of things.
So beginning and end of the day is often a sit-down experience.
Now, throughout the day, I carry my iPad with me because I can see all the production data, where the workload is, how it’s flowing through the floor, all those kind of things.
And so my iPad is always with me, always refreshing to see what the data looks like and managing that.
Now, there’s occasions where I need to do a couple things that are easier to do on one of my computers, and so going into my office to do that is what I prefer.
And having to go in and sit down, get the computers unlocked and start to do that little bit of work can be a little bit of a pain.
I mean, it’s not that big a deal.
I’m sitting down, I’m standing up.
But if after my morning routine, I hit the number three memorized position, so I go to the standing, then when I come into my office, I can set my iPad on the desk, open and unlock my iMac or my MacBook Air, or both if I need to use them simultaneously.
And then I don’t have to sit down.
I can do the real quick look, looking up what I need to know, maybe do a little data entry if that’s what is required.
And then I’m grabbing my iPad Pro and heading back out to the floor just to be in the mix and see how things are flowing.
And then in the middle of the day at my lunchtime, that is generally a sit-down experience.
I don’t plan on eating at my sit-stand desk because I don’t want food in my keyboards or spitting on my monitor, I don’t know.
But I have a little side table and so I can put my lunch there.
It’s a sit-down experience that I am eating my lunch and then I can put the desk back at the sit position so that I can see the screens if I need to look at something.
And oftentimes, I am looking at my iPad Pro through lunch because I do some Bible reading, I do some scripture memorization in the middle of the day, just to help me stay a little bit focused.
So I’m looking forward over the next weeks because I’ve only used it for a couple days to use the sit-stand desk and enjoy the possibilities that it presents.
So that is all I have for today.
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, you can send them to technologybytes at merigfamily.com.
M-E-A-R-I-G family dot com.
Thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
