The first step 👟

Hey y’all - Nico here. Happy Monday morning!

I searched ‘best time to send an email’ and Monday morning was rated dead last due to the flood of Monday work emails.

But screw it. If you’re like me, you’re about to sit in front of some type of screen for 10+ hours, 5 days in a row. And the start of the week is the best possible time to decide what you’re gonna try the next few days to feel better at your desk.

There’s a TON of stuff for us to talk about (posture, setting up your desk to reduce pain, exercises to combat sitting, and much more), but let’s start at the most basic, and arguably most important, place.

Between commuting, 8+ hours at your desk, eating dinner, and watching the new episode of Severance, you’re easily clocking over 10 hours a day sitting. One of the best first steps to feeling less fatigue, less pain, and all that bad stuff is to simply get out of your chair and go for a walk. It’s simple but very few people actually do it consistently.

• The average American currently walks 3000-4000 steps per day

• In 2020, a study across multiple national health organizations found that, compared with taking 4,000 steps a day, reaching 8,000 daily steps was associated with a 51% lower risk of death from all causes.

• And all that fatigue? Research has shown that office workers who sit for 4+ hours at a time have less blood flow to their brains, enough of a drop to create hazy thinking and diminished memory.

I had a particular day this past summer I remember distinctly.

I rolled straight out of bed, sat in my work chair, and pretty much stayed there until 5pm. I felt like an absolute zombie by the early afternoon, and only started to feel like myself again after going on a short run after work. 

There’s no magic number of steps, but studies agree that more is better, and eventually surpassing the 8000+ threshold is a great place to be.

So, here’s my first ask of you:

1) Take a minute to reflect on what your step count looks like now. How many steps are you getting on average per workday? What patterns do you notice about when those steps are happening? Do you have any regular breaks during your current workdays?

Most of you have access to data like the above - if you’re an iPhone/Apple Watch person, you can see your steps in the “Health” app. If you have another wearable, you can find similar data there. If you don’t have any of these, I’d recommend thinking of a recent workday and roughly how minutes you spent walking- on average, 10 minutes of walking = 1000 steps. I know this type of data isn’t 100% accurate, but directionally it will help you identify patterns

2) Identify one slot this week that you can carve out 15-30 minutes to walk. Straight up block the time off in your work calendar, so that one coworker can't schedule another 30-minute ‘quick sync’ with you.

• Some ideas: Can you find 15 minutes between Zoom meetings to take a second away from your screen? Can you grab 20 minutes around lunch time? Maybe you can go for a stroll while you brainstorm on a challenge you’re trying to solve?

Let me know if adding in some walking makes any difference in how you feel! Would love to see see/hear about any patterns you notice in your own data.

Talk soon,

Nico