It takes courage to stand up at work. I’m not talking about sticking your neck out, speaking truth to power or anything else so dramatic. I mean it literally; it is hard to find a way to work standing up at your desk instead of sitting down.

I know this because I’ve spent several weeks trying to find the perfect way to work at my computer without a chair. The search was not quixotic; standing up is in vogue. Medical researchers have found that people who stand at work tend to be much healthier than those who sit, and there’s a large online subculture of stand-up fanatics who swear that getting rid of your chair will change your life.

But I wasn’t just looking for better health; standing, I hoped, would also improve how I work.

Several years ago, I read that the novelist Philip Roth writes at a computer propped up on a lectern. I’ve used this technique as an occasional therapy for writer’s block. I’ll set my laptop on the kitchen counter and hover over it as if I were a conductor before an orchestra. This seems to help. Standing up saps some of my extra restless energy, allowing me to focus better on the task at hand.

The kitchen counter, though, wasn’t meant for office work, and after a short while my neck begins to strain from staring down at the screen.