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Pro-tip: Drink water at your desk. The frequent trips to the toilet will trigger eureka moments right as you finish at the urinal. I've had my best ideas at the

Pro-tip: Drink water at your desk. The frequent trips to the toilet will trigger eureka moments right as you finish at the urinal. I've had my best ideas at the urinal, and not specifically at the toilet because I don't use my phone when I'm standing.

tzs 2y ago
That would be good for more than just thinking. Both long periods of sitting at your regular desk or standing at a standing desk are not good for you. For computer work what is best from a health standpoint is to work at a desk with a chain, monitor, keyboard, and mouse that have all been placed and adjusted for good ergonomics, and every 20-30 minutes stand up and move around for a few minutes. See [1]. The moving around doesn't have to be vigorous exercise. Just walking around is good enough, such as one of your trips to the toilet. I find it interesting that taking a break for a few minutes every 20-30 minutes fits in with the "Pomodoro" system of time management. In that system you split your work day into 25 minute segments where you actively work, separated by short breaks. I've not seen anything on why they picked 25 minutes for Pomodoro. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that it is close to how often you should take breaks for physical health reasons. [1] https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html
- tetris11 2y ago
  > chain It took me a while to parse this correctly, for a second there I envisioned something else. > Pomodoro I agree, though I find that it has to be unconscious breaks for me. Having a timer to tell me when to stop focusing is a no-no.
  - tzs 2y ago
    What I used to do back in the '80s and '90s, before internet music streaming was a thing and before our computers had enough disk space to store our music collections, was bring a CD case full of my CDs to work. I'd put on a CD and go to work on something. Unlike a timer going off the CD finishing wasn't really an interruption, but I would be aware of it enough to decide if should just put on another CD and keep going (which I could do well enough on autopilot to do without losing focus) or if I was actually near a good point to take a break. We did a lot of contract work writing firmware for hardware makers, and I was supposed to track how much time I spend on each project so we could bill appropriately. That fit in well with the CD system. I just had to put all the CDs I used while working on a given project into a pile for that project, and at the end of the day add up the runtimes of them all to get the time spent on that project.

tzs 2y ago

That would be good for more than just thinking. Both long periods of sitting at your regular desk or standing at a standing desk are not good for you. For computer work what is best from a health standpoint is to work at a desk with a chain, monitor, keyboard, and mouse that have all been placed and adjusted for good ergonomics, and every 20-30 minutes stand up and move around for a few minutes. See [1]. The moving around doesn't have to be vigorous exercise. Just walking around is good enough, such as one of your trips to the toilet. I find it interesting that taking a break for a few minutes every 20-30 minutes fits in with the "Pomodoro" system of time management. In that system you split your work day into 25 minute segments where you actively work, separated by short breaks. I've not seen anything on why they picked 25 minutes for Pomodoro. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that it is close to how often you should take breaks for physical health reasons. [1] https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html

tetris11 2y ago
> chain It took me a while to parse this correctly, for a second there I envisioned something else. > Pomodoro I agree, though I find that it has to be unconscious breaks for me. Having a timer to tell me when to stop focusing is a no-no.
- tzs 2y ago
  What I used to do back in the '80s and '90s, before internet music streaming was a thing and before our computers had enough disk space to store our music collections, was bring a CD case full of my CDs to work. I'd put on a CD and go to work on something. Unlike a timer going off the CD finishing wasn't really an interruption, but I would be aware of it enough to decide if should just put on another CD and keep going (which I could do well enough on autopilot to do without losing focus) or if I was actually near a good point to take a break. We did a lot of contract work writing firmware for hardware makers, and I was supposed to track how much time I spend on each project so we could bill appropriately. That fit in well with the CD system. I just had to put all the CDs I used while working on a given project into a pile for that project, and at the end of the day add up the runtimes of them all to get the time spent on that project.