Unfortunately, the idea of working at a desk for eight (or more) hours every day, then driving home, sitting through rush-hour traffic and coming home to a sedentary environment of watching television is less than totally healthy. In fact, in a study from1 the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that excessive sitting tends to cause serious health problems, even if people exercised regularly throughout the week.
In other words, a few exercise sessions aren’t enough to make up for the problems of sitting for hours and hours at a time, and you could be trimming years from your life right now (which makes it a bit hard to enjoy the retirement you’re working so hard to achieve).
The good news is that you don’t have to start exercising extra-vigorously to be healthy. In fact, just getting up every half an hour or so can be enough to help your body get into better shape. With that in mind, here are some easy ways to avoid paying the price for your success.
- Start Doing Walking Meetings: People have to talk, but that doesn’t mean you have to sit down while you’re doing it. There are many good reasons to take a walking meeting over a sitting one, and if it lasts for at least ten minutes, it should help measurably improve the flow of blood through your body. As an added bonus, walking meetings tend to result in higher productivity for the company, so you’ll be getting healthier and doing more for the company at the same time.
- Walk To Bathrooms And Fountains That Are Further Away: Having a water fountain close to your desk is convenient… but what’s the easiest isn’t always the best for our health. A simple change is going across the building whenever you want to get a drink or visit the restroom - it’s something you’re probably doing anyway, and that makes it easy to work this into your daily routine.
- Respond To Others In-Person: If someone else in the office has a question, you could respond by email… or you could actually walk over to where they’re at and chat for a few minutes. If you get a great deal of questions throughout the day, this will help to get you onto your feet on a regular basis - and it might improve your social standing, as your willingness to see others helps makes you seem more available!
- Take Breaks: It’s nice to start a conversation with your co-workers, talk about trivial things and clear you mind a little while taking a nice walk outside. You get to know others personal side and enjoy the nice weather at times. You spend so much time with your co-workers during the day that talking about their kids, their hobbies, and even their special significant others and their love stories can be entertaining. Once I learned from a co-worker’s beautiful love story, what a mangagement ring is….new to me!
Be sure to balance this with doing the rest of your work. You only need to get up once every half an hour or so, and stand for about eight minutes. This doesn’t mean sit for an hour and then stand for twenty-four minutes - it’s regular movement that helps avoid health problems.
