I’ve been toying around with the idea and implementation of a standing desk for some time. Inspired by my friend Ben Lew and having read a couple articles (like this one) about the benefits of standing and working I’ve been wanting to give it a shot. I was however pretty nervous about going cold turkey and getting rid of my chair all at once.

My ideal scenario was to get a sit-stand desk that could raise and lower easily. As you can tell if you clicked that link, the desks are pricey, and currently outside of my desk budget.

I also came to the conclusion that I would probably lower it all too often thereby negating the advantages of having a standing desk, and that if I was going to do this, I just had to bite the bullet and go for it 100%.

I decided at the end of last week that I would go ahead and try it. I would spend a week standing at my desk, but I didn’t want to invest any money in the project until I knew I was going to be able to make it work. So I propped up a bunch of boxes and had my first experimental standing desk arrangement (the picture was taken with Instagram hence the style).

It worked well and I started to see a lot of benefits from standing. Here are a few of them:

• More energy and alertness. I used to get really tired about an hour after lunch, and would have a hard time focusing. Slouching in my chair I would nearly fall asleep sometimes, resorting to some afternoon coffee or just trying to get through the rest of work at a lower capacity. Since I’ve been standing I don’t feel as tired.
• I am happier overall, this is hard to quantify, but I get more enjoyment out of my work. I think the physical act of standing, being able to move around definitely makes my sometimes monotonous job a lot more enjoyable.
• Health benefits. As outlined by the article above, there are numerous health benefits to standing. While I do go to the gym (most) mornings, it doesn’t make up for the 10+ hours I spend sitting.

So after seeing these benefits I decide it was time to get a more permanent setup. For just under $60 I was able to build this setup, which so far (1 week in) has been amazing. I love having so much workspace and it’s the perfect height, without any adjustments to the bookshelves.

The simple list of items I used:

1. Hollow core slab door
2. 2 Bookshelves (I found these for $16 at my local Target)

Since we were already working on 21times.org we decided we could contribute to the effort while learning a bit ourselves. We reached out to some of the top users on Hacker News and asked if we might be able to use some of their content to create a course of motivation post to help keep people motivate throughout this month. A lot of those top users were gracious enough to let us user their content, and this was a great chance for us to test our idea.

So far we’ve received a great response. We’ve had a lot of signups and some great feedback. We’re excited to build this out further and get more courses in place. If you’re interested in getting some encouragement to get your app out this month in your inbox for 21 days, signup for free at hn.21times.org.

Now exactly 2 years and 4,757 updates later I have decided it’s time for my experiment to come to an end.

Like I said the only reason I decided to start using Twitter was to network. I made a goal that year to ramp up my networking efforts since I’m not much of an outgoing person. I was freelancing full time at that point and I wanted to see if I could use Twitter professionally. After two years I can say that although I have gleaned some professional value from Twitter it hasn’t been a good ROI in terms of how much time I’ve had to put into it.

Having said that I have met some really awesome people on/through Twitter and it functioned great as a public chatroom/office watercooler (as my friend Ben Lew, @n0s0ap pointed out). But, I feel it’s taking up too much of my time at this point and I feel there are better, more lasting ways to interact with friends as well as network.

I hope that my departure from Twitter doesn’t mean a departure from the friends I’ve made on Twitter. I hope to continue to stay in touch as best I can and I hope to do it in a more lasting and meaningful way. If you would like to connect outside of Twitter please feel free to contact me, or direct message me via Twitter and I’ll reply with contact information.

I’m going to be trying to keep up with my blog more often as well, so feel free to grab the feed.

A big thanks to all my friends on Twitter for their friendship.

Life is driven by entropy, and is always tending towards a state of disorder, but you can put energy into your life and fight that trend. We’ve all failed and had setbacks. Don’t let that baggage drag you down into a vortex of failure. Just pick yourself up, take a deep breath, and try again. The only shame is in quitting.

From 6 tips for shedding the baggage of failure by Ryan on ryanwaggoner.com.