Nonstop Office: Maybe It's Good for You

The cost of a NEAT desk is about $1,600 -- about the same as a standard cubicle's furniture. But they can be assembled for a lot less: Levine crafted a desk for his home office for about $55 using materials from Home Depot.

And if NEAT desks can result in employees who need fewer trips to the doctor, they could potentially pay for themselves.

The NEAT concept is not limited to desks: The whole office can be remade into a more active place: There's an indoor track on the perimeter of Levine's lab where a couple of staff members at a time can conduct meetings while walking.

For larger groups, he advises setting up a conference room where employees can walk while they talk. Instead of a table and chairs, Levine suggests putting in treadmills, such as the PaceMaster Bronze, that are quiet enough to allow "eight people to walk . . . and talk at the same time," he says.

"All these things can be converted to NEAT living," he says. "There's no need to hold a meeting in a chair."

Levine also has installed stationary bikes that are "whisper quiet" in his lab. But he draws the line at incorporating stair climbers and elliptical trainers into the NEAT design. "Conceptually," he says, " it doesn't make sense to me, because of the head-bobbing. It is that head-bobbing that makes looking at a computer screen quite difficult."

The idea of moving while doing mental work is not new. It's a skill that early humans had to master to survive. "We are meant to move," Levine says. "That is how we sorted out our nutrition and our shelter. It was how we hunted and got wood, how we explored and avoided predators."

Levine says he has had interest in NEAT from a number of well-known companies, which he declined to name, as well as from the offices of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

But is this approachpractical outside the research lab? Lean Plate Club member Lois Yurow of Westfield, N.J., thinks so.

Inspired by a news report of Levine's work, she commissioned a carpenter to build a desk for a treadmill in her home office. Yurow bought a 19-inch flat-screen monitor for her treadmill, got a wireless keyboard and mouse and hired a computer consultant to install them on her treadmill. (See a video of Lois in action at http://www.leanplateclub.com.) She spent a total of about $2,000.

Yurow loves her office, although she notes that both the carpenter and the computer guy she hired "thought this idea was crazy."

The treadmill is too loud to allow Yurow, a freelance editor, to use while talking to clients. But it's fine while she's editing or chatting with friends. Yurow is continuing with her regular workouts, but she finds that she's more alert and feels more productive as a result of using the NEAT device. "It certainly makes me feel more comfortable and keeps me awake on days that I am groggy," she says.

Yurow started using the treadmill at 0.5 mph, but "it is easier to stand still than to walk at that pace," she says. She gradually increased the speed so that now she walks at 2.1 mph on a 3 percent incline for about 45 minutes to an hour a couple of times a day.

That's more of a workout than Levine usually recommends. "The fit and the healthy can do that," Levine says. "But that's about as fast as you can go" and still do office work.

Levine's dream? To have 2008 presidential candidates deliver their major speeches while walking on a NEAT treadmill. As he says, "it would send to the people of America the ultimate message about their modernism, their commitment to health and their willingness to try something different." ·

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