As workers have become more tethered to their computers and desks, ergonomists have repeatedly warned that stationary, repetitive action can be bad for our physical health and emotional well-being. In the wake of these repeated warnings, many of us have found variations on standing desks popping up around offices.
The logic behind them is simple and sound enough. Rather than spending your whole day sitting and compressed, you can raise your computer or work surface up to standing height, relieving the strains of sitting, getting you up on your feet. Much has been made about how the shift from sitting to standing can improve your focus, either from the benefits of standing and engaging your body, or possibly just from the gentle “shock” your body gets from changing positions to keep alert.
While few will argue with the health benefits of switching things up to battle lethargy and even obesity, the relationship between our attention span and standing desks is one that’s much harder to parse, all thanks to evolution.
As humans evolved into the social beings of today, we developed an incredibly keen sense of empathy. The degree to which we are attuned to empathy varies, depending on the circumstances and the setting. For instance, walking down a crowded street full of strangers, we dial down our recognition and responses to other people.
However, in more comfortable and familiar settings, we dial the empathy up. Empathy can certainly be a virtue, but it’s also one of the biggest distractions a person can encounter. When a worker is seated in a cubicle—face buried in a screen or in documents—the empathy level at play is moot, since you’re largely insulated from stimuli and other people.
A standing desk strips any insulation you may have, turning you into a figurative antenna for everything that goes on around you. Your width and depth of vision increase exponentially (whether you realize it or not), and your empathy meter kicks back in, compelling you to take in and process the various emotions and goings-on around you.
A degree of stimulation and empathy can keep a worker alert and energized, but taking in the micro expressions of an entire office, you’re likely to shift focus time and again. “There’s a reason cubicle partitions exist, as they literally embody an emotive wall, blocking you from your colleagues’ emotional displays and subsequent distraction,” psychologist Mary Lamia told Quartz.
Fortunately, even though standing desks tear down your innate empathic wall, you can build it back up easily enough. You can create physical barriers that narrow your field of vision. Yup, you can use cubicle walls to effectively act like horse blinders to ensure your attention doesn’t stray from the task at hand. Failing that, you can move to a more remote section of an office, or just face a wall or a window.
The science shows that standing desks are, in general, good for you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t create their own set of problems. In addition to the hindrances on focus, they’ve also turned into a running punchline about the petty smugness that can manifest in the office. Turning toward a wall might not keep people from snickering, but it might keep you from realizing they are, which could help your focus.
You might want to tread lightly on social media, too:
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.