Burn 50 calories an hour just by standing

It's spring and I'm back to my home-made standing desk by the kitchen door, looking out onto the walled patio garden.

The research shows that we burn an extra 50 calories standing compared with sitting, so if I stand for 3 hours per day, I could burn off an extra 750 calories a week.

Not only that, it will apparently help keep blood sugar levels steady, so I should feel a bit more steadily energetic and a bit less sleepy mid-afternoon.

I've already clocked up 3 hours standing today, maybe that's another reason I've been getting more done!

Getting more done, 10 minutes at a time

In my post last week "From anxious overwhelm to optimistic excitement in 10 minute blasts" I came up with an experiment to get things done without getting stressy by just doing 10 minutes at a time.

I'd managed to train for and complete a marathon by running just 3 minutes at a time, so it seemed entirely possible that it would work for my day job and home admin too.

This morning, in an article on Fast Company, they covered this very subject in "Why Saying This Four -Letter Word Can Transform Your Productivity".

How timely!

So, from now on, I will not only be working in 10 minute bursts, I will also be shouting "Done" every time I complete something on my list.

This sounds like a sure-fire way to activate my brain's reward system to get a buzz from doing something real, instead of something pretend.

I've had 10 "Done"s so far today and some of those things even took longer than 10 minutes. 

What a start to the week.

From anxious overwhelm to optimistic excitement in 10 minute blasts

Someone just told me that it's up to me to choose how I face the day.

I've got into the habit of starting off with an air of "anxious overwhelm". I'm not entirely sure why. It's a feeling I seem to have been living with for a long time. Every now and again, I get a real burst of positivity and enthusiasm which can last for a couple of weeks, but I haven't been near one of those blasts for a couple of months.

In the case of today, I've fallen into my usual  trap and most want to crawl back under the duvet.

My habitual response to this is to give up quickly on the day that doesn't start well. In my head, the bad start condemns the rest of the day to the scrapheap. I quickly let myself off the hook of what I need to be doing and find a distraction to immerse myself in. I've failed at my work day before I've even started. What is going on?

Why should a day that start out with fear and dread? And then just because it started that way, does it really have to continue in that vein? What if I tried something to break the cycle? What if, rather than effectively doing nothing, I did just 10 minutes of something potentially revenue-generating from my work list? Just a 10 minute task. In fact, I bet I can break much of my to do list down into 10 minute tasks.

This might be the work equivalent of my run / walk marathon approach. For the 26.2 miles of the Berlin marathon, I only ran for only 3 minutes at a time. It was a neat little mind trick that kept me focused, injury-free and most importantly in a state of pure joy for the 5 hours or so it took me to complete the course.

So the experiment for today is to do a selection of 10 minute tasks from my list.

And the experiment for tomorrow is to choose to face the day with optimism and enthusiasm.

What an adventure into the unknown that could be!