Animator's Paradox: Gadgets

This page is part of the BA Thesis "The Animator's Paradox" by Lukas Wind (2022)

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Gadgets

This section is dedicated to all the cheap and simple quick fixes.

While the following ideas should never be be considered as long-term solutions, they should inspire take action in the now. Waiting until the height adjustable desk and the cool chair finally arrive can be disengaging and there are plenty of fun things to play around with in the meanttime:

Putting a chair on the desk to enable working at a laptop while standing might be surprisingly simple if body height happens to match (also check out the windowsill). If that doesn't do the trick, an adjustable laptop stand might be an easy and accessible solution.

While standing, we should never forget our feet which are rarely being used for anything else except standing on them. There are many gadgets to massage the feet and also flex calf musculature. Besides the more fancy options, a half-cut tennis ball or a rolled towel can get us started. While the moving and massaging of the feet supports blood circulation it might still not be enough to keep them warm. In that case, consider a heated foot warmer.

When dealing with delayed sleep phase syndrome, light-filtering goggles that block blue light can be an option. Since we touched on the impact of screen light, there are light-filtering apps (some even preinstalled) to control light spectrum based on daytime.

And speaking about apps, there is an abundance of time management, reminder and fitness apps that can be set to keep track of our physical activity goals, interrupt prolonged sitting or standing time and hopefully get us to move more.

A thought on productivity

A way to reduce time spent sitting (as well as screen time in general) is simply to be more productive. Switching costs are what researchers call the time the brain needs to adjust for a new task when being distracted or doing multi-tasking. These mental blockades "can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time".¹

Our days are packed full with distractions and interruptions. Nowadays it is pretty much common knowledge that multi-tasking is to be avoided in order to be seriously productive.

There are many tools for productivity such as time blocking, social-media detoxing, getting up early and more. And if there is any chance to reduce sitting time and increase movement – it's worth it.

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Sources

¹ American Psychological Association. (2006, 20th March). Multitasking: Switching costs. Retrieved 22. December 2021, from https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask