Making a Standing Desk

March 7th, 2020
standing, tech
With it looking like I might need to remotely for a while I've been thinking about how to make that more ergonomic. There's no position where I can use a laptop for very long without hurting either my wrists or my neck. A couple months ago I made a folding couch monitor to use while sitting, but (a) that's in the living room and (b) I generally prefer to work standing up. So I made a small standing desk in our bedroom:

It's a one-monitor version of my work hardware setup (which is still the same three years later, except that I have 27" 2560 x 1440 monitors now). I use the laptop keyboard and trackpad because that feels better on my wrists than any external keyboard and mouse I've tried, and I don't use the laptop monitor because that hurts my neck.

While I'm calling it a desk, it's really a shelf. It was easier to attach a shelf to the wall with brackets than build something freestanding, and a standard desk would take up a bunch more space.

It's very small, but all I need is space for a monitor and my laptop. The top is a 22.5" by 17" piece of 3/4" plywood painted white. I rounded the outside corner for safety. I could have made the top a couple inches narrower if I hadn't been trying to match a specific space. It's 41" off the ground, which is in the ~2" window where my elbows can be close to a right angle.

The monitor stand doesn't go high enough on its own, so it's elevated 6.25" with a 10.5" by 7.5" pine box. I made it out of 2x6 scraps I had, with a 3/4" plywood top for the monitor stand's base to sit on. I didn't paint this, though I might at some point.

I'm pretty happy with it, though all I've used it for so far is writing this post.

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Exercises in benchmarking and evals, part 7: DeepSWE, Senior SWE-Bench, napkin math, and winter tires

This is part of a series of exercises on benchmarking, evals, and experimental design (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)1. We're going to look at three questions, which are presented before the answers to give you time to think about the questions before seeing the a…

via Posts on July 23, 2026

Donation recommendations for effective altruists (July 2026)

My recommendation for donors who are American citizens or permanent residents is that they donate directly to high-value political candidates.

via Thing of Things July 22, 2026

Let's Taboo the V-Word

Read this post on Substack.

via Home July 12, 2026

more     (via openring)