“Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterwards or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. It appears that what is critical and maybe even more important than going to the gym, is breaking up that sitting time.”
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/sitting-is-the-new-smoking-20130529-2nca0.html
I've posted a few stories on the stand up desk trend. Here's the science story about the health problems caused by constant sitting from ABC's Catalyst: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3568627.htm
You will also get a sneak peak into the open office/hot desking environment of the CBA designed to foster collaboration and innovation.
At work ... the effects of prolonged sitting.
My previous post included an image of a standing desk at Faceboook HQ, and a while ago I posted a story about a seemingly wacky treadmill desk. What I thought was a fringe trend of tech firms has hit the mainstream at Sydney's Commonwealth Bank headquarters as well as Macquarie Group, GPT Group and Jones Lang LaSalle, Jonathan Swan of the SMH reports.
Doctor endorse the health benefits, and bean counters can cost the savings of the associated hot desk wireless office. Read all about it and a Sydney University study on it at smh.com.au
Looks like the treadmill desk has made it into the offices of Facebook HQ. I also noticed that the space has realized the central mechanism of facebook -- the wall -- in a physical form, with blackboards, whiteboards, and marked walls everywhere.
View the whole gallery over at SMH: http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/technology/technology-news/inside-facebook...
It's worth reading this article about the treadmill desk. Don't dismiss it as a novelty. Its an example of how an idea was born, implemented, how its usage changed over time and how the concept spawned a new idea -- the walking meeting.
Then Levine had another idea. If people could work while they were walking, why couldn't they have meetings as well? And so the concept of the walking meeting was born. His plan was that a designated walking track could be marked out in an office using carpet tape. Two people walking together could both wear coloured badges so that everyone else knew they were in a private meeting and shouldn't be disturbed.
... remarkably a Minnesota financial recruitment company called Salo heard about his ideas and decided to put them into practice ... "we found that walking meetings not only tended to be more productive than sedentary ones, they're also, on average, 10 minutes shorter."
