Where You Sit Determines How You Die

It used to be that where you sat determined where you stood. Now, things are getting worse, and where you sit can determine whether you get sick or die due to your sedentary lifestyle at work. Sitting for more than three hours per day is responsible for 3.8% of all-cause mortality, according to an analysis of behavioral surveys from 54 countries.

Sitting, along with obesity, is the new Public Health Enemy No. 1. To fight it, consider ideas like these:

1. Take your laptop and put it on top of an inverted trash can. That way you can not only stand at work, but you have a convenient trash file as well (and it's free).

2. Ask your employer to pay you to get rid or your desk as part of your employee wellness program. Mandate that all EMRs should be on machines that can be used standing up. Any doctor that sits during an appointment with a patient will be posted on Facebook as a bad example since the patient is probably taking videos of the visit on their cell phones. It's like being fat and smoking in front of your patient.

3. Remove all chairs from meeting rooms. It will improve your productivity.

4. Scatter yoga pillows around the office next to the ping pong tables and the cappuccino machine.

5. Have a "design your standup desk" hackathon.

6. Give everyone a free ergonomic mat, including surgeons in the OR.

7. Remove all chairs from fast-food restaurants to overcome the Supersizing Effect.

8. Make CEOs and presidents pay for those oversized, stuffed leather chairs for the 1% Club. Require them to get out of the office and talk to at least one employee every month.

9. Hire “sit police” for your organization, managed by the Chief Sitting Officer, who gets paid $250,000 a year. Anyone who violates the sitting policy will have their parking rates increased $5 a month.

10. Put Sitting Bull posters on the wall with a circle and line through it to remind workers of the hazards of sitting too long.

11. Automate pop up desks so that they automatically rise every hour, forcing you to stand. Disable the override for chronic offenders.

12. Be sure to have an ambulatory standing center where employees can go for a standing break. If you have a lot of engineers on your payroll, they will be the ones staring at their shoes in the standing break room.

Be part of the solution and stand up for standing up. Just don't sit there and do nothing to bend the cost curve.