"What you're doing right now at this very moment is killing you. More than cars or the Internet or even that little mobile device we keep talking about the technology you're using the most almost every day is...your tush."
So begins Nilofer Merchant's Ted Talk about the dangers of sitting and an easy way to get out of the harmful rut. Like many articles we've posted in this little corner Merchant agrees that sitting is the new smoking - an extremely risky but widespread habit. But although she had heard all the stats - about how sitting as much as we do increases risk of cancer by 10% and heart disease by 6% - none of them actually motivated her to get moving.
What did get her off her butt was a simple thing that all of us in the working world do everyday: business meetings. She started having meetings while walking - walk-and-talks she calls them - and now she's walking 20-30 miles every week.
Merchant says that the walking meeting is ingenious for two reasons. First it encourages new ideas. "There's this amazing thing about actually getting out of the box that leads to out-of-the-box thinking" she says alluding to the link between walking and creativity that we've mentioned before. It could be the fresh air of being outside that encourages fresh thinking. It could just be the act of getting your legs moving and your blood pumping. Whatever the reason Merchant says that she's a proven example of how meetings can be more creative productive and effective when they're done on the move.
The second motivating factor Merchant mentions is even more world-changing... And it's something we're always promoting at UpDesk: being healthy and working hard are NOT mutually exclusive. Merchant says that before she started the walk-and-talk idea she thought that she had two distinct options when it came to a work-health balance. "I used to think about it as you could take care of your health or you could take care of obligations and one always came at the cost of the other." But since she's started meeting on foot she's discovered that the challenges of staying healthy and being productive in her responsibilities are not in opposition to one another - they can be addressed at the very same time. It actually is possible to be healthy and successful in your career at the very same time.
That's something UpDesk is always talking about. You may see it in all those handy tips we give you tips on how to work out at your standing desk or improve your posture or keep stress at bay. Or you may see it in the very fact that we want you to buy a height adjustable desk not just because they're cool (even though they really are SO cool) or because we want to make money. The bottom line is that we want you to think outside the box - or the desk chair. We want you to see all the health benefits and creativity benefits and all-around life benefits of a stand up desk like the SquaredUp or UpWrite and we want that to change the way you think about lots of other things in the world. You don't have to choose health or success at work; it's not always either-or. It's not always one or the other. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.
Get out there you office trendsetter! Take a stand at your height adjustable desk and show the world that you aren't going to accept that sitting death-sentence lying down...or sitting in an office chair.
