I'm a big fan of working while reclined. It gets a lot of naysayers, but as long as you're still moving around regularly, my setup has been amazing for me. Pic of setup: https://i.redd.it/8oh29a2zwqu81.jpg
The biggest issue is core deconditioning. You engage abdominal and back muscles when you sit upright, but not so much when you recline.
In nursing homes, there’s usually a discussion around whether or not to get someone into a sit-stand recliner that helps support and lift someone into a standing position.
On one hand, the action of going from sitting to standing is part of the daily tasks that maintain fitness. On the other, if this is something that helps the quality of life of the resident, so be it.
I realize this is an extreme example, but I do wonder what the long-term effects are of staying recumbent for 16 hours a day (assuming 8 hours sleep + 8 hours work).
Not poo-pooing your setup, I would love to have one like that too, but it’s something that crosses my mind when I do consider one.
Your next upgrade is going to a junkyard and getting a driver's seat from a luxury car, like a BMW or Mercedes, with 16 way adjustment and heaters and coolers. Hook it up to sufficient power, and you can get all the same adjustments as in a car (lumbar, neck, thigh, etc).
Have you tried this? Because I remember reading somewhere that you need to reverse engineer the protocol they use to send the seat commands and that's a bit harder than simply hooking it up to power. I could be misremembering, I haven't tried it myself.
A lot of times the controls are on the seat itself, so for adjustments you’ll just need 12v power. For heating/cooling, I suspect it’s more complicated. On older cars, it might just be a wire you need to jump for hearing.
The wiring harness on a seat with powered multiway movement, heating/cooling, etc. will have dozens of 00 gauge wires ganged into a proprietary male plug that can only plug in and communicate to a module that is hardwired to a computer proprietary to the vehicle manufacturer.
I can't even get 2012 mazda rx8 seats into a 2012 mazda speed3 due to the above ^ makes me sad.
Yeah, that’s true especially for modern cars with memory seats. That said, afaik the actual seat controls can still be used with nothing more than a 12v power source. I have not personally tested this on a newer car seat though.
lol - those things are driven by software modules which many times requires communication to other modules like radio, body control module, door assembly module. maybe an older car will work with 12V supply.
My workplace would require you to go through an ergonomic assessment, and to have evidence that upright posture is contributing to (already severe) back issues.
power is one thing, signal is another. Power and signal are both controlled by proprietary controller and computer in a car.
I honestly think a nice manually adjusting lumbar supporting leather driver seat (or even cloth from like a low tier sport car)would be nice enough. Now I'm planning....
I have looked for a dentists chair because they recline so well but I dont know if they would be any good for extended lengths of time unlike a high end car seat which is designed for long journeys, but how many recline for the truly lazy?
Haha yeah. If it's a one-off zoom call, I'll use the background blur feature to avoid explaining anything. If it's someone I talk to regularly, it's whatever, it doesn't look _too_ weird.
Keyboard is a Dygma raise, chair is a zero gravity recliner (got it used off craigslist, but the patio versions you can get delivered for cheap are similarly comfortable).
I am also using a recliner, though my setup is nowhere near as refined as yours. It is just a big recliner, monitor on a desk in front of me, mouse on the arm of the chair, keyboard on my lap (which made me learn to touch type without realizing it).
I had a few comments about it when doing video calls, and they are usually positive. My gaming headset (Sennheiser Game One) also got a few comments, again, mostly positive. I mean, you are just getting yourself comfortable, and reasonable people understand that being uncomfortable is not the way to be productive.
I have a similar setup. I tried everything, ergo chairs, balance balls, standing desks, saddle chairs etc. I finally gave up on ‘ergo’ solutions and decided to build a setup around a recliner chair. It works for me and I highly recommend it.
How did you manage to close the lid of your Macbook and still be able to view content on the external display? Is there some setting that I'm missing? When I'm attached to an external monitor and if I close my Macbook lid, the system goes to sleep (am on Macbook Pro M1, 14 inch 2020 model).
Didn't know that. Thank you. Although, for this to work then, it will go against my habit of switching off the charger as soon as the battery gets charged 100%.
> switching off the charger as soon as the battery gets charged 100%.
Batteries have a limited amount of charge/discharge cycles - if you are doing this you're unnecessarily wasting those. Keeping the device plugged in once charged is absolutely fine - the battery itself will stop charging and the power will be used only to power the device itself so it doesn't have to touch the battery anymore.
This stupid advice has been going around for ages and if it ever applied it definitely doesn't apply now - all modern lithium batteries use charging circuitry that stop charging beyond a certain point regardless of whether it's plugged in or not - if they didn't you'd be seeing battery fires everywhere.
> but why would you have such habit even when stationary and the charger is lying around?
Two reasons - One, the charger heats up a lot when I keep it on. Of course, you don't feel it unless you are nearby or touch it. Two, in the past I once had the charger destroyed due to a power surge. The Macbook remained fine after that power surge but I had to replace the charger since it stopped charging after that.
About the heat: I have a MacBook Pro M1 16" and a third-party 65 W charger, it barely gets warm, far from even recognising by being close to it. Perhaps you should get a better charger if it heats up so much. The one I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Baseus-Adapter-Delivery-Folda...
Checked the reviews for this particular one, no one is mentioning fire. If you search for Apple charger caught fire you will find some, can happen to any electronic device.
I have three of them plugged in 24/7 for 3 years now and recommended them to others, all houses still standing. But you can also get the original 96 W charger from Apple, it's bigger so it can dissipate heat better than the smaller ones.
I would not trust reviews on any site that's incentivized to sell me something, but especially not Amazon which allows sellers to edit listings and put completely different products while keeping the reviews (not to mention inventory commingling so that even buying a legitimate product won't save you).
I'm also a big fan of working while reclined. I am less fancy, and probably less ergonomic about it. I will sit on a recliner couch, or in the warm season I also sit on a zero gravity chair[0] outside, on my deck, in the shade. In both instances I sit with a pillow behind my back... to make the seat less deep / keep me propped up a bit more I guess?
FWIW, I probably sit 2-4 hours reclined on couch or recliner chair, 2 hours standing, 2 hours in traditional chair.
Are the keyboard mounts purchasable through Dygma as well? I've been looking for decent chair-based split keyboard mounts and am having a hard time. I found some mouse-stands that attach to chairs, but they end up being a bit too small in all the wrong places.
Nah, they don't have very many mounting solutions available. I tried first using some camera gear / clamps and couldn't get it stuck in the right position, so I ended up using two of these gooseneck mounts: https://www.amazon.com/Tryone-Gooseneck-Tablet-Stand-Compati...
It could be more solid, but the part of the bendy neck closest to the keyboard is resting on the chair's armrest, and that's what gives it most of its stability. These guys[0] put 1/4-20 screw holes on the bottom of their split keyboards, I wish everyone did that.
They look like goose neck iPad holders. They’re probably too flexible for me and would wiggle under typing. Other than that they seem to be an elegant solution.
Keyboard: dygma raise. Takes some getting used to, but has been a big improvement over having a keyboard in my lap.
Monitors: Left is LG 34GK950F-B, right is a cheaper 32" LG. I wouldn't really recommend either of them. The left one has a great picture, but has developed some weird issues with powering on with my laptop over the past year.
Mini desk: https://www.amazon.com/VIVO-Universal-Microphone-Platform-MO...
Getting out is a bit of an exercise. I push myself up on the armrests, pull my legs in, and then step out over the left side. The whole monitor setup is on wheels, so if I had the whole thing further away from the wall, I could just roll it away from me and get out normally.
@papa_bear Can your hands rest on those partial keyboards? Is there enough support? Do you need to keep your hands hovering above? Can we get a link to that clip-on support for the split keyboard? Thank you so much for that image!!
The bottom rectangle is 12" x 24", and then the top/side pipes are 36" each.
It's a bunch of steel pipe from Home Depot, and sturdy enough you could do pullups on it. The pipe isn't super cheap, was around $200 total I think. I went with 1 inch diameter because it would hold the monitor arms better, but you could go thinner and cheaper with a different monitor mounting solution.
Three-quarter- or one-inch diameter EMT could give a similar look, be easier to cut (if required), be less expensive, and be strong enough. It might take a little figuring how to do the joins, but that can be the case with threaded iron pipe as well.
Somehow a search this morning sent me to Pinterest with a lot of photos of decorative knots. That might be a way to do some joins between crossbars, as well. (I hear macrame is coming back!)
Makes sense, I imagine someone with more handyman skills could get this done for 1/10th the price. The pre-threaded steel pipe has a good amount of weight to it though to keep it stable, and it took zero skill to put together :P
There are a lot of variations that you can build yourself and find your actual ultimate keyboard.
I run a low-profile Kyria (one wireless and one wired) with a Miryoku (Halmak) layout, as well as a Charybdis Nano with the same layout and the tenting 'kit'. It however took many keyboards to get to the point where I found the ones I truly liked. (It's a money-pit so don't get into it unless you're okay with spending)
Wonder how it compares to the ultimate hacking keyboard ( Uhk )? I’ve been using it for a few years now and I say the same. They look very similar so curious if you’ve tried it too and the dygma still came out on top?
It's a zero gravity recliner -- they cost a few thousand dollars new, but they pop up on craigslist every now and then for a few hundred dollars. You can also get a patio version on amazon for $50-100, and it's arguably more comfortable, but less stable. I used one of those for a couple years before upgrading to the leather version.
While I agree with other commenters here that this setup probably isn't a good idea for most people, I want to go out on a limb and say it seems to me the author may have good reason to have undertaken such a project (he specifically mentions that this article is NOT about his motivations). Specifically, just profiling based on the apparent age of the gentleman in the photos, I would not be surprised if this reason was some sort of injury, arthritis, or similar source of pain caused by ordinary sitting-at-a-desk posture. All that is to say, good for him for making a thing that seems to work for his needs, and shame on people jumping to poo-poo this because it's not solving a problem they personally have.
I've tried all the setups at this point, including the supine one. It has plenty to recommend it in a limited, mostly consumptive role; many people sleep a whole eight hours in roughly that position. It does tend to get in the way of typing although a fully split keyboard can address that.
But my everyday work is now done at a floor table. This posture brings a different level of activation energy, and it lets me keep moving around which is a clear advantage over most. It can present some of the same stresses as chair seating but it has more opportunities to relax. And unlike the standing or treadmill desks it easily works on a budget too - tape up a cardboard box and weigh it down and you have a temporary desk setup that will support most equipment. For a better surface with a finish and leg room, Ikea provides options, or you can get more specialized folding floor desks with angle adjustments and drawers off of Amazon.
Using a floor table is my favourite one so far, though I haven't tried a reclining setup yet. My only issue is the lack of back support if I want to lean back.
Personally I realised that trying to economise too much on desks is actually kinda crazy when you work out how much time one spends using the desk (like a mattress), so I went and bought a standing desk which is definitely easier than stacking cardboard boxes etc.
i assume you mean sitting on the floor and using a shorter height table as a deak. i would love links to Ikea options. i can't even think what you would search for to find such a thing!
Definitely. I had to go in for a back operation some years ago, after which I wasn't allowed to sit or bend down to pick things up off the ground for three months.
Beforehand I reworked my whole house to lift everything up and to make arrangements for computer use/entertainment while lying down.
I used an older iPad as a remote screen with a sturdy heavy use bendable arm to hold it, while just putting the keyboard on myself with the mouse down next to me which worked well enough. His mounted keyboard would probably have been an improvement, but using the mouse next to your body on a sturdy surface+mat worked really well.
I also made a temporary standing desk using boxes of paper to lift up my screen, keyboard and mouse, so that when I got tired of lying down I could stand for a bit.
All in all it turned out to be a really cheap and fast to implement solution that easily worked for the 3+ months.
I've done something similar for a while due to injury. I wouldn't recommend it. If you work 8 hours a day like this and sleep 8 hours a day, all while lying down, you'll waste away very fast. Sitting or standing might be uncomfortable but it's preferable. Do physiotherapy and try a standing desk or something.
I've worked lying down in a similar fashion for over 10 years.
You really don't need the contraption, just a monitor stand (you can make one out of two bits of wood) or a nearby wall. Also a wireless keyboard (I use the Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard). I used to just use a laptop and when I travel I still do. In both cases I either rest them on my chest or (more often) suspend them in front of me and control them with my fingers and palms.
I'm healthy physically, I just prefer this. I swim, jog, cycle, do weights (I can lift my own body weight (120kgs, 6'1") with my arms vertically and horizontally, pushing and pulling).
The idea you get body sores or other negative effects is ridiculous. You need a good firm surface to look after your back posture, but obviously I'm always moving around, getting up and doing things. I don't wash myself with a rag on a stick.
The stand was adjustable enough such that with my thin laptop, I was able to angle the stand such that I could type and view the screen comfortably even while lying down, without the laptop falling off the stand. I mostly used the touchpad on the laptop, but I also placed my trackball on the mouse stand which was also angled, although not as steeply due to there being not much of a lip on the mouse stand to keep the trackball from sliding off. It's annoying to have to move the laptop stand to the side whenever I get out of bed, but for a short term solution it worked out well.
Those are very versatile bits of kit. I use them in bed, but also if you travel and you carry an external travel monitor with you, you can essentially use it as a monitor mount to raise the monitor to a more comfortable eye height.
You also have the monitor set up so that it's hanging over you somewhat? When you rest the laptop on your chest, do you use the laptop display? Isn't that a weird position to type? What do you mean suspend the keyboard in front of you?
haha, you kinda made it sound like your setup was super minimalist, but none of your descriptions are making sense in my mind
The comment was necessarily brief but I'm happy to expand on it.
Basically the screen is set up so it's at about 45 degrees facing downward. It is indeed hanging above me so it's easy to get in and out from under it. With my head on the pillow(s) it's about perpendicular to where my stare falls naturally. I use a 40" 4K screen (for the optimal pixel size for a Mac) in portrait mode.
With the laptop I open it as far as it goes (almost flat), sit the bottom edge on my person and then tilt the screen forward a little so it's in the roughly the same angle as the big screen would be. I keep it in position using the pinky and thumb of one or both hands and use the remaining fingers to type from each side.
When I'm using a keyboard I'll hold it above my chest on one side between my pinky and my palm, holding the bottom up with my thumb and support it on the other side with my thumb roughly half way or so. I use the remaining fingers to type.
If it sounds weird it is, but I didn't plan any of it, it just evolved that way and ended being the most comfortable way for the given equipment. I had to watch myself typing on the keyboard just now to figure out what I was doing. I don't touch type and I have to look at the keyboard.
When I'm just using the touchpad for extended periods (when reading or watching videos) I just rest the keyboard on my stomach or the bed, since that takes the least effort.
It is super minimalist, by design. Right now it's just a screen arm (bolted to the wall), keyboard and computer. About the same as you'd find on an office desk.
Yup. I'm a big strong guy, I used to run when I was over 130kgs. It's totally fine, I've never had even a minor injury (cycling is a different matter). If my knees ever give me trouble it's when I haven't been running for a while.
Running is so natural for humans. I used to run "barefoot" (no runners or padded shoes) on rocky roads in the dark. I never got wrongfooted, your body just adjusts. It's amazing how your body can adapt to the environment.
Extended periods of time in a supine position can lead to a number of health problems including venous stasis, pressure ulcers, and respiratory difficulties. The position of the keyboard and screen can put strain on the neck and shoulders. And let's not get started about sleep problems that are just waiting if you do this.
Even hospitals require patients to be up and moving around, even if they are bedridden. In addition to the issues above, t helps the patient to stay mentally alert and to avoid depression and it helps the patient to build up their strength so that they can eventually be discharged from the hospital. If a patient is unable to move around, say hello to our little friend heparin, prevent venous stasis. If doctors feel this strongly about getting up and moving, even when you can barely do so, imagine how they feel about people who choose to do this for any other reason.
If you have a lot of money to spare, you could always get one of these bad boys which are designed to allow one to work flat on ones back including a specially designed magnetic mouse: http://www.altwork.com
That setup seems pretty RSI-prone and antiergonomic to me... Forearms appear to be near-orthogonal to the keyboard, mouse usage requires putting your wrist at nearly 90 degrees, top of screen should be at eye level but appears considerably lower than that. Not to mention, blood flow to the hands may be problematic in longer session, especially for people with low blood pressure
Ok, the author was happy with it after "more than a hundred hours" and did a nice writeup, but I really would think twice before replicating it.
While this position might be comfortable, I would worry about cardiovascular deseases over the long-term. Emulating bedridden people sounds even worse than sitting (for healthy people).
A standing/walking desk seems like a better direction to explore. It's much more natural to do a couple of push-ups or hang from a pull-up bar every 30 mins when you are upright already.
That's less comfortable, but certainly closer to what our bodies need to function well for decades. Lying should be reserved for evenings & nights.
I did this after an injury and began experiencing orthostatic hypertension upon standing after several months. It went away completely after not spending many waking hours a day reclined or lying down, and I don't have any underlying conditions that would cause it.
If I heard correctly in the 1990s, one of the MIT wearable computing people wrote their dissertation while laying down, using their glasses-mounted head-up display and chording keyboard.
(It sounded all the more luxurious in a time when few people had laptops, and the pickings for desktop machines were often slim, and shared.)
I can feel the pins and needles in my hands just by looking at that photo. How do you avoid this while laying down? I would prefer a semi reclined position rather than completely laying down.
The weak link in all these setups is the mouse. Hilariously weak.
"You can use your hand like a hook supporting your arm, with your hand itself transferring the weight onto the edge of the mouse pad."
Really? Seriously? This is one of the least ergonomic things imaginable.
Just use a trackpad and a lot of these problems go away. Trackpads are superior anyway, and you can fix them into a position, you don't have to make all kinds of large motions with your entire arm while holding your arm's weight up, etc.
Not actually subjective. Massively superior to avoid all that unnatural wrist movement, and trackpads enable multi-finger gestures of all kinds that a mouse can't do. Meanwhile you have more precision with much less motion.
And for this particular application, it should be quite easy to see that a mouse requires a mouse pad, and relies on being used in the wrong plane, because of gravity, whereas a trackpad can be anchored, takes up a lot less space, and can be used in any plane.
I don't know much about ergonomics, and I'm wondering how easy/hard that mouse position is on the hands. (Much smaller wrist bends in different directions can cause big problems.)
Currently the Youtube and Netflix apps for Meta Quest-2 HMD both let you reposition the view stage laying down on your back or on pillows & it definitely takes the physical strain out of watching a full movie in VR. I agree this should be a standard option across all the apps.
The only problem with this setup is that you will probably fall asleep more often than not when trying to work... and if you manage to get used to it you will train your brain that "lying down is for work, not for sleep" which is not good either.
I may be unusual in this regard but I don't think I can remember a single time that I have fallen asleep "by accident." I've never been able to fall asleep in class, or reading a book, or watching a movie or just lazing about the couch late at night. Is this something most people have to worry about?
It's not something I worry about (since sleeping is great) but yes, I can sleep pretty much anywhere I'm comfortable. I can't easily fall asleep if my head isn't supported though so falling asleep when sitting upright doesn't really happen. The thing about the method discussed in the article is that your head is always supported so yeah I could imagine myself falling asleep during a long conference call (if I wasn't engaged in the material).
Absolutely. When I had a workout (or went running or hiking) on the same day or even the day before, it is extremely hard to keep my eyes open after 9:30pm. I could be watching / reading the most exciting thing.
When I "just work" i.e. don't do much in terms of physical activity, I can stay awake as long as I want.
I've fallen asleep in class, during exams, reading a book, watching a movie, having a conversation, sitting around in a living room, etc. I think it just kind of depends. Some people fall asleep easily anywhere (ironically I cannot sleep well in beds), other people do not.
I worked in Bangkok the last 5 years in a digital marketing startup. The well educated locals and expats here were all working on 13" laptops on cheap IKEA tables and 30$ non-office chairs.
How can people in a predominantly "digital" job work with 13" laptops? I get the cost saving thing, it's obvious for a startup. Save costs on behalf of employees health.
But a more important factor is a proven decrease of work performance on small single screen workplaces with bad ergonomics.
I managed their IT on the side and whenever we had some cashflow available, they wanted me to order overpriced iMac setups for their designers instead of fully specced out windows desktops for half the price, which would be more cost efficient for a notoriously broke startup. Alternatively they could have invested in proper docking boxes and desks / chairs, which would surely increase the productivity of employees.
I did something very similar to enable true working from home while recovering (slowly) from a herniated disc about 18 years ago: given a work laptop that opened 180 degrees, using scrap and bits from my garage I hacked together a 1 x 12 pine vertical sandwiched between head of bed and wall, with 1/4" plywood horizontal (with rectangular hole jigsaw-cut for laptop screen) fully cantilevered using eye-bolts and metal chain from vertical plywood extension. IBM Model M in lap, with a (now sadly unavailable) MS optical trackball mouse on the bed next to my right hip. There was enough vertical clearance to easily roll in/out of bed (on my left side). Understandably, my wife only tolerated its marring of our bedroom decor until my back was mostly back to normal...
edit: in addition to the expected pillows for my head, a triangular-cross-section firm-foam knee pillow was an essential component of this setup.
Actually I was thinking the opposite, assuming you are referring to VR generally and not whatever BS zucburg is on about... I've bought a quest, and I'm really not the type for new and shiny things, but it's made me feel less bad about playing the occasional computer game because it really makes you move around - vr lying down is only good for watching movies, that's about it.
In short, VR is like the standing desk for video games, but probably even better for health.
I've been doing this with a bit of cordelette and two eyehooks for years. I hang my laptop by its hinge on the cordelette, adjust the screen angle to balance, bluetooth trackpad and two keyboards (one for each hand, at my sides). It's really helpful on days where my neck or back act up.
I’d genuinely consider buying a trolley/arm type device that mounts a display such that it would hang over me similar to this design, but could also be advised so it could also be viewed when laying on my side. Most devices are either stupid expensive or stupid ugly though.
Well I just do it by putting the laptop on my chest and using an external keyboard that also contains one of those touchpad mice like laptops have. Works like a charm and costs way less time / effort. The chest gets a little sore if you use it for too long or too many days in a row, so lately I've been thinking maybe I need to elevate the laptop off my chest a little with a C-shaped table of sorts that the laptop can sit on can sit it on. I get into flow so easily working in such a setup, and wish I could do it more often. I'm considering investing more in my work from bed setup.
This has a great feature that I can go from lying down to using the same desk standing up.
This works for me for comfort and for back issues. I do yoga twice a day so I am not infirm or compromised in any way. Part of that may be because I alternate with using the desk as a standing desk and a lying desk.
Like others have said this probably isn't a good general solution imho. A solution I don't see mentioned much, if at all, is a draughtsman's chair [1] - they're a tall ergonomic chair that are used by draughtsman. This along with a stand up desk made from ikea bits and pieces is a solution thats lasted me for years.
This doesn' t look very easy on arms to me. My current favorite position is use a 30cm small bench and a low desk(less than 1m) with back lean or not lean on sofa cushion. So you can switch squatting and sitting very quickly by moving the small bench. It' s less likely to feel tired with more muscle in stress occasionally. And when you stand up there' s slightly more work done than normal sitting.
The best way I've found is to get a hospital-style "overbed table" and a low bed such as a folding cot. Stretch the overbed table way up and sling your monitor below it, and you're done.
I walk everywhere (prob two car/auto trips in the last year) so deconditioning isn't something I need to worry about.
I've found that typing while reclined is specifically productive for creative writing. Programming and general (home) office work are best while seated on a multi-monitor setup. Writing, however, seems to flow better when I am in the same posture as when I am dreaming.
raising my arms like that is tiring. A split keyboard on the bed so that I don't need to awkwardly raise my arms is a better idea than whatever monstrosity that is.
I expect to have a newborn in about a year and I expect that newborn to want to spend a lot of time sleeping on me. I could imagine getting some work done this way.
As one who actually did do some work while holding a newborn, what you actually want is a Moby wrap or similar.
You wrap the kid up and tie them around your torso, then you have both hands free. Even my fussy little guy was reasonably happy in his, and would contentedly nap there while I typed.
This is a really bad idea. Your shoulders and back muscles will go for a toss because a move along the y-axis on a desk translates to a Z-axis move when laying on your back.
I used to use an iPad laying down, and tiny movements that required me to move my shoulder up and down messed me up royally. I speak from experience.
I mean, hats off to one of the greatest pieces of overengineering (and the documenting thereof) in history. Not only does this ensure a comfortable reclining work position — it ensures absolutely no one will ever want to recline with you, either. Pure productivity.
I don’t think focus would be a problem but sleeping problems. When body is accustomed to stay awake even when lying then it’s much harder to fall asleep.
I don’t see why my partner would have an issue with this. Besides, she knows how much more comfortable I am reclined rather than at a desk. That has to count for something …
