The Health Crisis Of Office Jobs - Bob King - #1098
5/16/20261 hr 7 min
Bob King is the founder and CEO of Humanscale. Is your desk job aging your body faster than you realize? Sitting may be part of getting work done, but the way most of us do it can wreck our posture, stiffen our joints, and create problems that show up years later. So what can you do at work every day to protect your future self? Expect to learn why bad design might be the cause of your back problems, why sitting is so damaging to your health, what a healthy designed desk set-up looks like, if posture advice is mostly nonsense, how much physical discomfort degrades cognitive performance and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Use Code MODERN20 for 20% Off Your Purchase at https://shop.humanscale.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) Bad Posture: Discipline or Design Problem? (0:39) What’s Really Causing Your Back Pain? (7:41) Is Sitting the New Smoking? (9:48) The Secret to Designing a Healthier Workspace (16:28) Is the Freedom Chair Named After Obama? (18:44) Why Movement is a Non-Negotiable (22:06) How Your Environment Controls Your Habits (30:11) Is Screen Time Ruining Your Health? (43:46) Sunlight vs Blue Light: What’s Worse? (45:10) Do Men and Women Need Different Work Setups? (51:45) Can Saddle Stools Fix Your Posture? (52:50) What an Optimal Workday Actually Looks Like (55:25) The Hidden Danger of Off-Gassing (01:05:53) Where to Find Bob Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsChris Williamson· Host0:00
Most people think that back pain and low energy and bad posture are discipline problems. You think that they're design problems. Why is that?
Bob King· Guest0:09
Yeah, very interesting. If-- Well, if you look at, you look at the data on the population of people around the world, certainly people in the United States, a significant percent of adults in, in America, for example, have chronic or on... or rep- repeated, uh, back pain. It's a, a huge problem, and as you get older, it gets worse and worse. I think, um, I think it's, it's clear if you look at what people do day to day, you can see quite clearly that there's, there's a cause and effect there.
Chris Williamson· Host0:38
What's the evidence around sitting and back pain?
Bob King· Guest0:41
There-- You can, you can look at, you can look at sitting postures. The most interesting thing about that is you look at postures when people sit. I, I study people sitting. I think it's quite interesting. Uh, there's data on this too, but if you were to look anywhere in, in buildings here in Austin or, or buildings in Tokyo or, or Singapore, anywhere, you would see people sitting at their desk, hunched over their desk, their back probably not even touching the back of their chair, keying on their computer for hours and hours on end. That's how people sit. I even at one point I needed a, a slide for my deck, so... of someone, you know, sitting in that posture. So I Googled "photo of person working on a computer" or something like that, and I got hundreds of pictures. They were all essentially identical. People hunched over their