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After 2 whole weeks, I don't think you should be offering "in the long run" advice about things.

I’ve had a walking treadmill desk for over ten years.

Whether it’s for you is quite personal: See if you can find somewhere to try it out for a few minutes, in particular try typing and using the mouse/trackpad while walking. My treadmill tops out at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), which is really too fast to do anything but walk. I can watch videos at 3mph, code routine easy stuff at ~2mph, code hard stuff at ~1mph, and to read hairy code I have to stop completely. I don’t walk all day, I also stand and sit.

Some things that will help you have a good experience:

• Get a purpose-built walking treadmill: They’re smaller and more importantly go much slower. • Get a very solid, stable desk and put it on a stable floor. Any little monitor shake will make things miserable. • The treadmill is not silent, so you’ll probably need to stop when speaking on video. It’s awesome to be in watch/listen-only meetings and put in a mile or two. • A nice option I’ll upgrade to someday is a stand-alone walking treadmill with a wireless control, plus a nice sit/stand desk.

I tried watching videos on an iPad while walking on a treadmill and found that head movement made it annoying to watch. The obvious solution is a bigger screen further away. Did you find anything like that?

Note that my treadmill can go down to about 0.4mph (0.25 km/h) which is really slow. Anything you can run on is usually too fast.

I'm not intending to give health advice but the health benefits of walking are pretty well established and commonly accepted by doctors. I encourage you to do the research if you are skeptical or talk to your doctor.

Health detriments of sitting all day are also pretty well established and commonly accepted by doctors. Don't know where pnut was going with that lame comment.

Well, in his case, it would the long walk advice.

A coworker was into climbing and bouldering.

We often joked that, when we all inevitably got treadmill desks, we'd have to get him a climbing-wall desk. It'd be great! We could just stick a computer at the top of this thing, and maybe some espresso for motivation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjiepNna8GA

He agreed.

Sadly, we never did get treadmill desks.

I never tried that: is it comfortable to use mouse and keyboard while walking? To me it feels quite weird.

Like everything else, you get used to it. You can adjust your speed to lower at first of course.

Do you walk 8h a day then? Or do you somehow sit sometimes? How do you sit with the treadmill there under your desk?

Do you wear shoes while walking? Do you typically wear shoes indoors then?

I walk around 4 hours per day. Yesterday was 4 hours 13 minutes, 22k steps, 5.96 miles. It seems like a short distance for that many steps, but it's because you tend not to take huge strides.

I'll usually do 10k steps in the morning, take a break and sit and eat lunch and rest for a bit, then finish another 10k steps.

The treadmill has rear wheels, and I roll it back out of the way of my desk, then roll my chair back to my desk, when I want to sit.

I don't wear shoes while walking or indoors. If I start getting foot problems, I might get a pair of indoor shoes.

In my experience typing while walking has not been an issue but using a mouse with moderate to high sensitivity can be challenging. Using a gaming feature such as "sniper" mode to toggle mouse sensitivity when precise clicking is necessary solved the problem.

Can you walk during calls, e.g. remote pair programming? Heavy breathing, noise from the treadmill and footsteps etc. affect you?

If not, what kind of mic are you using? I think a headset will suffer from the heavy breathing

Also - post your standing desk or its dimensions please

Yep! I walk regularly on calls and during pairing sessions. Google meet is pretty good at noise cancelling. My coworkers say they can't even hear the treadmill. Heavy breathing isn't really an issue for me at 2.5km/hour. I'll have to dig up our standing desk dimensions, but there is no problem there for me or my partner. I'm 6', she's 5'8", and we both have different standing desks and different treadmills. There would be no issue with the desk height or width, but you should measure your own setup if you're thinking of doing the same.

I jump on a rebounder a couple of times a day, nothing like your setup but it seems to improve my wellbeing. The rest of my time is unfortunately quite sedentary, I tried working while standing but for some reason it didn’t work out for me. But now im thinking that standing and walking are quite different. You made me think about getting a thredmill...

Google tells me a rebounder is a kind of mini-trampoline? What do you do with it?

Yes, it is a mini trampoline of around 4 feet in diameter, it doesn't have springs but bungee cords so it doesn't make any sound when you jump on it and the jump is quite a bit smoother. I jump on it in sessions of 10 minutes, and it feels like a very convenient and fun cardio. Jumping somehow works out your whole body and it supposedly helps with lymphatic fluid drainage - actually , any kind of movement or sport does help with that but having a sedentary lifestyle affects it heavily. It is a good general exercise and very convenient to do in the confines of your own home. Oh, and jumping on it feels effortless while it actually does work out your body quite well, when you stop jumping it does feel like you had a workout. Of course towards the end of the session the heart and breathing rates goes up. I really like it.

Can you please link the model?

How do you track your steps? I have treadmill desk and a Fitbit, but my Fitbit is worthless because my arms don’t swing while I’m working.

Fitbits have longer bracelets you can swap in, so you can fasten it over your ancle. People in jobs where they cant use watches usually do that if they want to track steps. Your doctor/nurse might be wearing one.

I use a pedometer app on my phone and put my phone in my pocket.

IMO sitting just makes your blood slower to flow = less juice for your brain.

I was helping IT support before the pandemic when I had free time (or waiting something to finish) And I liked all the walking around the office, between buildings, etc.

Now, I artifically simulate situation by leg-shaking :)

Surprised to see a "smart" product, sold on Amazon, that doesn't integrate with Alexa.

share some photo or model of treadmill.

Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack.

People are substituting artificial things for the natural things that made us happy in earlier times. Walking on a treadmill vs walking outside in the sun and shade amidst plants, trees, and other living things. Eating things for nutrition vs eating fruits and vegetables for enjoyment.

The options here are sitting while working or walking while working. The options aren't sititng while working or disregarding society and returning to the forest.

>returning to the forest

Which is basically a myth at this point. For most of the last 5000 years most people have had a much lower quality of life than people do today. It's not like things were nice before we sat infront of computers all day.

It's not that life was living hell for everyone either. Plenty of people have lived comfortable lives throughout the ages -- it's just that there are far more of them nowadays.

There's also still a lot of people who have troublesome lives, not to mention people living un-comfortable lives in front of a screen.

> It's not that life was living hell for everyone either

It's not really that much of an exaggeration. Significant percentages of women died in childbirth, young children died of diseases, and men died of violence. If you didn't, multiple people close to you did. Back-breaking manual labor for subsistence was the norm. Even the small minority who lived "comfortably" could randomly die from a tooth infection.

It can be exaggerated to be sure, but I think it's even easier to discount the stunning drop in absolute poverty over the last two centuries because we've simply forgotten how terrible the old "normal" was. I highly recommend books like Enlightenment Now or Factfulness that do a great, detailed, and evidence-based job of driving this point home.

> It's not really that much of an exaggeration.

But it _is_ an exaggeration. Child and maternal mortality rates was obviously higher back in the day, and social safety nets were mainly based on community and family rather than own savings or contributions like in modern Western society.

On the other hand, there are still somewhat un-contacted and isolated tribes on multiple continents, and I've never heard anyone describe their life as hellish. Most of those tribes are perfectly aware that there is an outside world, and one would think they'd join the rest of us if things were _that_ bad.

As it is now, it seems the situation is far worse for those who attempted to leave but failed to integrate into modern society.

That being said, average quality of life does seem to have increased a lot the last 100 years. There's no doubt about that.

> It's not like things were nice before we sat in front of computers all day.

This might be true, technically, but often HN uses this point to dismiss any criticism of modern society and it use of technology.

Thanks, this is a valid criticism of my point. I maintain that it is a bad idea that people had it better as hunter gathers considering it is not an option to return to the forest, and we are doing pretty well by sedentary settlement standards. But you are right that it is also a bad way to shut down valid arguments against the problems our technology has caused.

> It's not like things were nice before we sat infront of computers all day.

But we didn’t have to sit in front of computers all day.

A lot of people still don't! For those of us who do, WFH gives us a bit more flexibility about how we spend the time in front of a screen and maybe a chance to fit in exercise where there used to be a commute.

I also get plenty of sun and eat well. But I happen work at a job that requires me to look at a stationary screen for much of the day, like I imagine most of us do. So I am choosing to not be as sedentary. But if you're suggesting that we should abandon working in tech because it's unnatural, I'm afraid you're probably talking to the wrong audience :)

You're not the first person to mention gerbils on wheels to me. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing something unconventional, despite its health benefits. If you feel like you're not living your ideal life in this industry (assuming you are also in tech), that's fine, but don't project that onto me please. I enjoy what I do and how I live.

You are projecting. I referred to the archetype and trend and not you specifically.

No longer in tech.

> People are substituting artificial things for the natural things that made us happy in earlier times.

You frame threadmills and soylent (terrible name, though) as gerbils in a cage. That's one way to frame it. But I choose to frame those things as steps towards becoming something more than humans, with humanity taking its destiny in its own hands.

Maybe one day we will have conquered death and live as long as we want to, but until then a small-ish machine that improves my quality of life with me barely noticing is a good first step.

We might be the only animals that eat "for nutrition" instead of "for enjoyment", but we are also the only animals that read.

I’d have said we’re the only animals who eat for enjoyment (without having proof of that). Or did I miss the joke here?

Just because you make an analogy doesn't mean it's valid lol. Like there's obviously an entire category of differences between a person consciously choosing to use a treadmill desk versus a captive pet gerbil on a wheel.

Is it really a bad analogy though?

Is it? What do you think yourself?

It might not be, considering one need money to live.

Some of the highest performing humans for the past couple thousand years have spent an abnormal amount of time in dimly lit rooms reading, what we're doing now is not far off if you're actually plugging away at useful tasks and not mindless scrolling.

For what it’s worth, I made a similar decision. My dedicated home office is large enough to reengineer for a treadmill (I used one at Google every day for a short while), but I decided it was better for me to go on frequent mini 5 minute walks outside, with long walks before work and sometimes during lunch break. Being outside is healthy, which is why I like to find a shady spot outside to work for short periods.

Also, short walks are great times to think about work. Or, sometimes having a pad of paper to think away from a computer.

> Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack.

A bit much? I'm not sure where you get soylent from.

Nobody is substituting here, I didn't get that from the OP at all.

Another commenter mentioned that working from home allows for asynchronous tasks, the OP merely stated that means he can work and work-out on a treadmill. He is neither being compensated for or replacing going out into nature.

Yeah. That’s what optimization is. It turns out that when I sit for work, then lift for health, then walk in nature for enjoyment I get a lot more out of each of these than when I try to get one thing to meet all these needs.

Like, this is the most normal thing that it works this way.

This naturalistic fallacy nonsense is so tiresome. “Oh wasn’t it great that we lived in nature and got eaten by bears”. No. It sucked.

I'm really happy for you that you either don't work or have a job that involves a lot of walking outside in the sun / nature.

Stephen Wolfram has a contraption for hanging his laptop in front of him so he can walk outside and work at the same time.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

Let's not give people arguments for being more like Stephen Wolfram here...

This seems impractical with conventional screens. Maybe with e-ink this would work better.

He runs two full-height racks only for himself?

That's some heck of an environmental impact.

Growing plants illuminated by expensive indoor lighting setups instead of growing it in your garden with free sun.