About a week or so ago, I’ve started to notice my upper spine ache occasionally. My immediate assumption is that it is related to the posture I stay in for 8+ hours a day. I started to conduct some research on sitting posture in an attempt to find a solution to a health problem that could get much worse if uncared for.

The first thing people recommend is picking up the Hermin Miller Aeron chair. I’ve heard of and read a lot about the Aeron chairs before and have always wanted one, but, working at a startup, it is not something that can be justified. Furthermore, me being known for my frugality, would never spend over half a grand for a office chair, let alone a second-hand one. Nevertheless, I would much rather purchase an iPad instead.

While looking for alternatives, I came across an article on BusinessWeek: Your Office Chair is killing you. The article does make references to the Aeron chair for its popularity in the American workplace. However, they did talk to a doctor who raised criticisms on the Aeron’s height adjustability and criticized its design goals.

Don Chadwick, the co-designer of the Aeron, says he wasn’t hired to design the ideal product for an eight-hour-workday; he was hired to update Herman Miller’s previous best-seller. “We were given a brief and basically told to design the next-generation office chair,” he says.

That is not the gist of the article though. The article said researchers concluded that sitting is a public-health risk and notes that sitting in a shitty chair just makes it worse. Instead of sitting in an hour for 8.9 hours a day, they advice people to work while standing.

Looks like Jamis (of Capistrano fame) at 37signals is already doing it.

I can totally see myself giving it a try. Now, I need to see if there are suitable-for-standing-while-working desks/surface at Bootup.