Practicing what I preach is a goal I have when it comes to my children. I want to lead by example to the best of my ability. And I realize that I need to do that in my work life as well.
I haven’t always been a workaholic. In fact, I have spent many of my years doing as little as possible. But since I have had children my perspective has radically changed. Money was always something I enjoyed but didn’t really need much of. Spending whatever I made always made sense to me because there was more money to make.
Credit cards didn’t even enter my life until I was thirty-five and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But here I am at fifty-two with more responsibility than I ever planned on having.
There were many times that I worked as hard as I do now. I used to have a theater company with some friends and that required twenty hours a day of labor and I loved it. I worked as a production assistant on some movies many many years ago and that too required working ridiculous hours that I thoroughly enjoyed.
This current spate of endless labor is a different thing entirely. The labor I do now outside of teaching involves working at my desk for hour after hour.
Many of my clients do the same thing. They work long hours at a desk and I do everything I can to encourage them to mix it up and move more. I have written about different choices for what you sit (or stand) on when you work and encourage people to use different chairs, or balls.
But recently I got an email from one of the many people I follow in the business world, in which a number of questions were posed. The questions were very simple and I failed in most metrics.
I am pretty sure the first question was, is checking your email the first thing you do every morning? Once I answered yes in my head I knew I was in trouble. The next was, are you working out or taking a long walk before you sit at your desk? In trouble again.
For the longest time my routine was to wake up, put the leash on the dog and take a 40-60 minute walk to start my day. As I have gotten busier and busier that walk started happening later and getting shorter.
Since that email I have changed my tune and my dog is happier for it.
And here is a fun little tool that you can use to make sure you are not spending too much sedentary time as well. http://pomodorotechnique.com/