No, You Can’t Type Well On A Treadmill Desk

You’ve finally persuaded your boss to buy you a treadmill desk; congratulations. Now you have to persuade her that new research suggesting that walking while working seriously damages typing ability and mildly diminishes thinking ability is bogus. And it may be. After all, the research at Brigham Young University involved only 75 people, all of whom were randomly assigned a regular sit-down desk or a treadmill desk. Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times that the subjects, none of whom had ever used a treadmill desk, were tested for manual and mental dexterity. Yes, the manual test required them to type words that flashed on a computer screen, and the mental tests required them to recall a list of words and use basic math skills. The envelope please… Reynolds reports that the treadmill users performed worse on almost all aspects of thinking, including the ability to concentrate and remember, compared with those who had been seated. Wait, there’s more: the treaders were much worse at typing. They typed slower than sitters and they made more mistakes.