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:

The One That I Want Another Sister

I want a baby sister or brother. Because I want to play with another kid, and I don't want to play with Josie because she is in preschool and I won't play with her very often. So I want to play with someone very often who is not just two people. …

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts September 5, 2026

Linkpost for September

On September 19 and 20, Sparrow Infrastructure is putting on The Overhang, a conference in Washington D.C.

via Thing of Things September 4, 2026

Ed Zitron's AI prediction track record

I was curious how well the predictions of the most widely cited AI skeptic I've seen (Ed Zitron) have done, so I looked at how his predictions panned out. To disclose my own biases, I've never had a particularly strong pro or anti AI progress posi…

via Posts on September 1, 2026

more     (via openring)