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.
