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-Hey, guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and it's
Thursday, which means it's time to do some YouTube Q&A with you
guys where I take a question that one of you guys
asks about your YouTube audience development and video creation
efforts and anything else you guys ask me
and the comments down there.
And I do my best to answer.
Today we have a question from James Chick.
"Hey, @timschmoyer.
I've been looking at transitioning
to a stand-up workstation.
Was wondering if you had any advice or low-cost solutions."
This is an important question, because a lot of us
in video careers spend countless hours in front of our computers
editing videos, responding to comments,
doing the social media stuff, and so it's really important
that we talk about this.
So here's mine.
I've been using a standing desk for about two years now,
and I love it.
This is an Ikea hack I put together.
I'm going to show you guys exactly how I
did all this in just a second.
But first of all, I'm going to tell you
the story of why I switched.
I was one of those people that I spend like all day sitting in
from the desk.
And I just started feeling achy by the end of the day,
like my shoulders would be all tense and like my wrists.
I had to keep doing like the snappy thing.
And it was just like getting uncomfortable after a while.
And then I watched a video that I will put in the description
below this video about the benefits of a standing desk.
And I had seen some people use a standing desk before,
but I wasn't quite sure that I could
make that plunge because I was used to sitting all day.
After doing a lot of reading online
about how you burn 10 times more calories when you're standing
versus sitting and how your blood flows better because like
when I stand here and I work, like really I'm moving around.
I'm one of those fidgety type of people anyway.
I've always got something in my hands.
And so standing is like the perfect solution to that.
And after the end of the first day
or two of using a standing desk, I
realized that not only was I more alert during the day,
because I was kind of like moving around a little bit,
but I actually had more energy at the end of the day
to go do other things.
I didn't feel like so lethargic.
But more importantly for me, all those aches and my sore back
and the tenseness in my shoulders,
like all that just went away.
And personally, I highly recommend standing desk.
I want to show you guys exactly what I did
to build mine for super cheap.
But I know some of you guys might need money
to build something like this in the first place.
And so if that is you, and you have over 1,000 subscribers,
you should check out FameBit.com.
They are my sponsor here at Video Creators this month.
You can just go to their website and find a marketplace
of lots of brands and companies who want
to hire you to talk about them.
I wish I had a sponsor for this one where I could talk about
a standing desk for you guys, but I don't.
So maybe I will keep looking over at FameBit
and one will pop up.
There's a link and descriptions below if you
want to go check them out and start making more
money with your YouTube videos.
I highly recommend, great people.
You should definitely go check it out.
So here's my full workstation.
Guys, you can buy a standing desk that's like motorized
and will adjust up and down for you
with like a push of a button or two.
And they start somewhere around like $600, $700
and go all the way up to several thousand dollars.
I made this whole setup here for $114, all brand new stuff.
And you could probably do it cheaper,
but this is what I did.
So this is a desk from Ikea, this thing right here.
And Ikea has a lot of desks, but the reason why I got this one
is because it has adjustable legs.
And so I could adjust the legs to be the exact height of what
I needed them to be.
But the legs didn't extend high enough for me by themselves.
So I actually got these bed risers
that are underneath the feet of each of the legs on the desk.
And that kind of puts it up a good six, eight, seven inches
or something like that.
And then I fine-tuned the height of it
by adjusting the length of the legs.
If you have a standing desk.
You want your arm, your elbow, to be in a completely like 90
degree angle right here, to be just rest your arm,
basically your elbows, just kind of like barely touching
right here.
And then when you come to the actual monitor
if you're doing a standing desk, you want your eye level
to be pretty much like right at this top third of your screen.
You don't want your screen to be too high.
You don't want to be looking down on it.
You want your neck just to be able to look
like straight ahead so you can just relax, right?
So for me to have my monitor down on the desk
would be too low.
So I bought this.
This little board right here is just a shelf from Ikea
for like $2.
And then I got these legs for it.
It's actually a piece from a different part,
like a kitchen part or something at Ikea.
But it works perfectly for just legs
that screw to the bottom of this thing,
super solid and really strong.
So that's what I have my monitor on.
I just have my MacBook Pro underneath here
and then my Cinema Display and everything just
plugs right into that.
When I bought all this at Ikea, though, I actually
bought this stool also, thinking, you know what?
It's going to be really hard for me
to transition to standing all day.
And so I bought this stool because it
would be approximately the right height for me.
My desk doesn't adjust the height.
I figured this would be like just a fallback.
To be honest with you guys, in the past two years
that I've been doing a standing that's, I
think I've used this maybe 10 times total.
I do, however, use this nice handy mat.
It just adds a little bit of cushioning for me.
It's not really that necessary, but when I bought all this,
I thought it was going to be way harder to switch than it really
was.
And so I bought all this like nice padding,
cushioning stuff for me.
So I'm glad I got the mat.
I would recommend it if you're not already standing on carpet.
If you're standing on a hard floor,
I would recommend getting the mat.
But the transition in general, guys, it's not nearly as hard
as you think it is.
I switched in just like one day, cold turkey.
And I was like, why did I not do this earlier?
If you guys have any questions about all this,
please feel free to ask in the comments below.
I'll be around for the next couple days down there
answering your questions.
And I would love for you guys also
to tweet me a picture of your workstation.
You've seen mine now and how I kind of organize my stuff.
Just tweet me @timschmoyer on Twitter.
Send me a picture of what your space looks like.
I would love to see what you guys are working at, too.
And if this is your first time here,
I would love to have you guys subscribe every Thursday.
We do some YouTube Q&A kind of like this on Tuesday.
We look at all the updates happening on YouTube.
On Wednesday we do YouTube tips.
And guys, I do all of this because I really
believe that a lot of you guys have messages that
need to spread, and I want to do everything
I can to help you guys grow your YouTube channels
and develop your audiences so that the people who need
to hear what you have to say can easily and simply find you,
hear what you have to say, and hopefully
have their lives to be changed.
So thank you for letting me be a part of that.
Subscribe, and I will see you guys again next week.
Bye.