I’m sitting here basking in the rays of sunshine beating (weakly) on my desk and thinking about my Australian friends (hey y’all) sitting on their various East coast beaches eating turkey salad, washed down with Pimms, for Christmas.
We’ve already had our now traditional early Christmas lunch and food-fest weekend, pictured serenely above before the action got started, and we get to celebrate Christmas all over again tomorrow!
I’m actually sitting here trying to get my head around a new concept from America that my brother has alerted me to in the I.D. magazine. I often encourage my clients to stand up to have meetings (it helps people to keep to the point), walk around the block (to clear their minds before a brainstorm session, or to have a confidential one-on-one meeting with someone, which helps promote consensus and beats sitting across a desk) but this takes the idea in a different direction: walk while you work!
The idea is that your desk is a high-tech piece of gym equipment, designed to allow you to walk (at a sedate 2mph) while you work. The desk curves at the front to hug your stomach, while the desk whirs into place to allow your hands easy access to your keyboard with your wrists resting on a thick pad. It took the writer around 15 minutes to come to terms with the new arrangement and zone in on his work, which I think is pretty good, all things considered. He even felt productive when staring off into space!
Priced at between $3,500 and $4,500 (from Steelcase’s Details subsidiary if you’re interested) I think the Walkstation is going to be next years hot corporate toy, although I suspect that, though they may be used to intimidate visitors (the possible permutations for calculating CEO’s are wonderful!!), they will otherwise sit forlorn and idle like so much other gym equipment after the month of January.
Hmmm… wonders… how much of your power cost you could save if all your employees were walking their working week? Not only would they feel warmer (lower heating costs) but you might be able to power their laptops. And think of it, no need to shut down your machine at the end of the day either, just get off and go home.
Heck, why stop there? Why not make these things mobile so that you can work as you walk home?
Walk as you eat in restaurants. Walk as you watch TV in the evenings. Walk as you sleep… you may think that’s daft, but some people do this already.
Next thing you know, there’ll be some whizz-kid working out how to speed the process up so that you can run while you work and then they really will have reinvented the wheel.
The hamster wheel, that is.