Does Standing Up Improves Creativity And Productivity

A Case For Standing Up While Creating

Photo by Brian Gordillo on Unsplash

Standing desks at workplaces are becoming increasingly prevalent. Despite complaints about aching legs and strain on spines, more and more people are choosing them. The pay-off is just not in health benefits but also in productivity.

An average person sits for approximately twelve hours a day. The doctors are warning that sitting is the new smoking.

In the most clicked article on standing desks, Cia Bernales writes that she used to have tight shoulders, lower back pains, and bad posture. Now she is not slouching, walks around the office more, and is more productive.

The advice to make sales calls while standing up has been around for a long time. Now there are calls for stand up meetings and stand up schools.

According to Andrew Knight, Professor at Olin Business School, groups are more creative and collaborative when they work standing up.

The participants wore small sensors around their wrists to measure “physiological arousal” — the way people’s bodies react when they get excited. When a person’s arousal system becomes activated, sweat glands around the feet and hands release bursts of moisture. The sensors pass a small current of electricity through the skin to measure these moisture bursts.

Knight and Baer found that the teams who stood had greater physiological arousal and less idea territoriality than those in the seated arrangement. Members of the standing groups reported that their team members were less protective of their ideas; this reduced territoriality led to more information sharing and higher quality videos.

“Seeing that the physical space in which a group works can alter how people think about their work and how they relate with one another is very exciting.” — Andrew Knight.

Many artists are known to express themselves better while standing up. Violinists, guitarists, trumpeters all perform while standing up because you are holding your instrument upright when you're standing. You are connected, expanded, tall, wide, round, inflated…