3 LITTLE THINGS: To offset your 'sitting and screens' — in 10 minutes
I use small time slices during the day in these ways to give my body and eyes a break.
Warmup
I finished an online meeting early last week. With about 13 minutes to spare before the next one began, my fingers and brain twitched in a familiar, conditioned way.
Check Instagram? Scroll through my unread email? Order more protein powder on Amazon?
Then I gut-checked myself. I’d been sitting and staring at screens for two hours.
Time to offset the damage.
Summary
If you’ve read my new book NOT TOO LATE (thank you) you know there’s a chapter titled “Sitting and Screens.” (Details on a current book promo in the Cooldown section below.)
The subsequent journey that unfolds is rooted in breaking free from the physical and mental inertia that accompanies this modern day threat to our wellbeing.
Let’s level set:
All of us in the developed world have evolved a long way from our ancestral origins, when we were constantly moving—be it running, jumping, crawling, or swimming—to seek nourishment and safety.
We now spend more than 7 hours a day staring at screens.
We also sit somewhere between 7 to 10 hours a day (often staring at those screens.)
We have ready access to food we can order using screens while sitting.
Obesity now plagues almost 42 percent of American adults.
We’ve got a new medical condition to battle called “text neck syndrome.” It sounds silly; it’s actually pretty awful.
The threat is real. We can do something about it — in small ways, every day.
Let’s get it done.
Post
Excerpt from NOT TOO LATE:
“When I look back to the years of my thirties and early forties, I see myself sitting and looking at or through screens.
The screen of my computer in the Manhattan offices of The Wall Street Journal. The screen of my cellphone, where Facebook was becoming the first online service of its kind to reach a billion users.
I also see myself sitting.
Sitting at my tiny cubicle desk.
Sitting on a subway. Sitting to get a manicure. Sitting in a movie theater.
Sitting in a restaurant. Sitting in a car or train commuting almost four hours a day from my Hudson Valley home, where I’d moved after the 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attacks damaged my downtown New York City apartment—a morning of chaos, smoke, and death that imprinted on me the true impermanence of everything.”
Not everyone will want to become a competitive athlete in midlife the way I did as an antidote.
But all of us can do small things to break our cycle of sitting and screens.
Here are three things I attempt to perform regularly in the 10-minute slices of free time that pop up.
File these in the “I’ve-heard-of-this-but-am-I-actually-doing-this?” category. The best fixes are simple ones you’ll stick to.
Thing 1: “Micro-workout” (w/ minimal sweat)
Exercise “snacks” are a big trend as The Washington Post’s Well+Being unit describes. By definition, an exercise snack is a brief snippet of exercise, usually lasting a minute or two and indulged in often during the day.
I think of a “micro-workout” a bit differently.
It’s still not going to get you too sweaty (i.e., you can pop back on camera or into a meeting without raising eyebrows or noses), but it will last a longer than the “snack” version — and you’ll get that noticeable break from sitting and screens.
Below, a few of my go-to micros:
• Micro Workout A: 10 minute stair climb (up and down)
Find a staircase anywhere in your house or office and go up and down with some vigor. Enough said.
• Micro Workout B: The Tune-up
30 seconds wall sit (video here) — note in the photo at beginning of this newsletter, I’m performing a wall sit against a wide post because that’s what was most accessible.
30 seconds plank (video here w/ two versions)
30 seconds wall pushups (video here)
1 minute rest
Do this 4 times for a total of 10 minutes. If 30 seconds is too long for these moves, simply go as long as you can and then keep repeating entire workout (with the rest) until you reach 10 minutes.
• Micro Workout C: 10 minutes of yoga.
My default is the Yoga Studio app collection “10 min Beginner Flexibility” session, which realigns and resets my body to go back to work.
I grab a mat and throw it down in my garage if I’m working remotely. If you’re lucky enough to have an empty space in your office or break room at work, you can use that.
Thing 2: Box Breathwork
The first time I contracted Covid in 2021 (pre-vaccines) I was in bed for about 10 days. I got so tired of screens that I read a lot. One of the books was James Nestor’s “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.”
It’s a fascinating deep dive into why as a species, we humans have lost our ability to actually breathe properly — with some significant consequences.
In the Appendix, Nestor includes a long list of practical exercises to improve how we breathe — including breath exercises.
I like doing these in my 10-minute slices because they are quiet (i.e., if I’m in an office, nobody really knows what I’m doing) and it settles me between calls and meetings.
Here’s a popular, easy one in Nestor’s book. It’s often used by Navy SEALs to stay focused and calm in high pressure situations:
BOX BREATHING
Inhale to a slow count of 4 (count in your head)
Hold your breath for a count of 4
Exhale for a count of 4
Hold on the exhale for a count of 4
Repeat
That’s it. Nestor recommends at least six rounds; you can get easily knock out that and a few more in 10 minutes.
Try not looking at your phone or computer screen while you perform this. And even close your eyes to give them a rest.
Thing 3: A walk around the block (or your house)
A few of early warning signs for me about the risks of sitting and screens:
Elevated glucose levels. Mine weren’t awful, but they were tipping into pre-diabetes range.
Cholesterol. Again, no five-alarm fire, but key biomarkers were ticking upward in not good ways.
The Middle Age Groan. I first heard this term from the writer Jancee Dunn in a column for The New York Times. I then realized that was the sound I was making rolling out of bed in the morning.
An inexpensive defense tactic for all of the above: just walking briskly for 10 minutes. Seriously. I wear a continuous glucose monitor and 10 minutes makes a positive impact.
Walk around the block of your neighborhood
Walk around your house (say, if it’s raining or you can’t leave your kid(s) — and include the stairs if you have them. Play music to make it more fun. I like my Not Too Late Spotify playlist.
Walk around your office (and don’t stop for the nice chatty IT guy.)
Bonus Thing: Eye lubricant drops
“Your eyes look really dry. Do you sit in front of a computer a lot?”
Umh, yes.
“Do your eyes feel like they are burning or stinging?”
Pretty much always.
“You need to use eye lubricant drops.”
OK.
This was the riveting conversation with my ophthalmologist recently. Dry eyes are common, it turns out, and often impact people over age 50. (Check!) Reduction in screen time is one of many mitigants, according to the National Eye Institute, which is part of the US government.
While I’m working on reducing that screen time, I bought Systane drops. Now, when I go to sleep, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been rubbing sandpaper across my cornea all day. Your eye doctor can help determine if these are right for you.
Cooldown
A quick reminder that Spartan Race, the world’s largest obstacle course racing company, is offering a FREE RACE of any length in 2024 or 2025 to people who purchase a copy of my new book, NOT TOO LATE.
This offer is good even if you’ve already purchased the book. And if obstacle course racing isn’t your jam, give the code to someone who might like to give it a go!
(Click the button below to get your code; available while supplies last.)
Thanks for reading. Let me know how you fight back against “sitting and screens.” And as always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.
Wendy