How often should you get up from your desk?

Health bodies say to break up long sitting but give no exact number. A rhythm that works in a real day, about once an hour, and what to do while you are up.

27 October 20266 min read

For most people, getting up from the desk at least once an hour, for two to five minutes, is a good target, and more often is better if your day allows it. Health bodies don't set an exact number. What they agree on is that long, unbroken stretches of sitting are worth breaking up, and that light movement, even a walk to the kitchen, counts.

So a simple rule does the job: try not to sit for much more than an hour at a time, and if you can stand up for a minute every half hour or so, better still. The rest of this post covers what the guidance actually says, a rhythm that survives a real working day, and what to do with the few minutes you are up.

What the health guidance says

The World Health Organization's guidelines on physical activity, published in 2020, say adults should limit the time they spend sitting, and that replacing sitting with activity of any intensity, light activity included, has health benefits. The UK's Chief Medical Officers put it more directly: adults should break up long periods of inactivity with at least light physical activity, when they physically can.

Neither sets a number of minutes. There is no official "stand up every 30 minutes" rule, however often you see one quoted.

The research behind the advice comes in two kinds.

Large population studies find that people who sit for most of the day have higher rates of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. They show an association rather than proving cause, and most of them measure total sitting time, not how it was broken up.
Small lab studies compare a few hours of unbroken sitting with the same hours broken up by short spells of easy walking, often only a couple of minutes at a time. In several of them, the breaks led to a smaller rise in blood sugar after a meal. These are short studies in small groups, so they are a good sign rather than a precise prescription.

The WHO guidelines also ask adults for 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate activity, the kind that includes brisk walking. Getting up from the desk doesn't replace that. It covers the long hours in between.

A rhythm that works in a real day

The exact interval matters less than having one you actually keep. This is a rhythm that fits most desk days:

How often	What	How long
Every 20 to 30 minutes	Change position: sit back, stand to stretch, look out of a window	Under a minute
About once an hour	Get up and move: refill your water, walk to another room, take the stairs	2 to 5 minutes
Once or twice a day	A real break away from the desk, such as a walk after lunch	10 to 20 minutes

An hour suits the way work is already cut up. Meetings tend to run on the hour, and a lot of people work in focus blocks of 50 minutes or so. If you work in blocks, stand up at the end of each one. If you have back-to-back calls, stand up in the gap between them, and take some of the calls on your feet: posture on long video calls has ideas for that.

Don't worry about hitting exactly 60 minutes. Some hours you will be up three times, and some you will sit for 80 minutes because you were in the middle of something. Over a day it evens out, as long as the very long stretches are the exception.

What to do in those few minutes

You don't need to change clothes, break a sweat or do anything that looks like exercise. The aim is to use your legs and change your position. Pick whatever fits where you are:

Refill your water. A smaller glass means more trips, which is the point.
Take the stairs one floor up or down, to the kitchen or a bathroom on another floor.
Walk while you think. Pace a lap of the room or the corridor while you work out the next paragraph or the next fix.
Stand for a phone call, or walk during one that doesn't need a screen.
Do a two-minute chore if you work from home: unload the dishwasher, move the laundry along, water the plants.
Stretch. Calf raises holding the edge of the desk, shoulder rolls, a slow reach overhead. There is a full set with steps in two-minute desk stretches.
Look far away while you are up, so your eyes get a break too.

If you have a few more minutes, go outside. Even a short loop of the block puts you in daylight and gives your head a proper rest, and a walk after lunch is the easiest of those to make a habit.

If standing up makes you dizzy, or standing or walking hurts, mention it to a doctor or a physiotherapist. The same goes if a health condition limits how much you can move: they can tell you what is right for you.

Why getting up is harder than it sounds

Almost nobody disagrees with any of this. The trouble is remembering it at the right moment.

When you are absorbed, time goes missing. An hour feels like twenty minutes, and the moment you notice you have been sitting too long is usually the moment you are in the middle of something you don't want to leave. A few things help:

Tie it to natural stopping points. Stand up when you send an email you have been writing for a while, when a file is exporting or a build is running, or when a meeting ends.
Put things a short walk away. The printer, the trash can, the charger and the water pitcher don't all need to be within reach.
Leave gaps between calls. End meetings five minutes early where you can, and spend those minutes on your feet.
Let something else keep count. You are bad at noticing time while you are absorbed. Everyone is. A reminder that does the counting for you fixes the part willpower can't.

How Notchpals' Stand up moment works

Movement is one of the ten areas in Notchpals, and its characters (Coach Flex, Bizzy and Honk, for instance) exist to get you out of the chair. Their Stand up moment follows the hourly rhythm above. Once you have been at the Mac for 55 minutes in a row, at any time from 8 AM to 10 PM, your Movement character peeks out of the notch:

Coach Flex, Movement: **Stand up**, after 55 minutes in a row, 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM

Those 55 minutes are minutes at the keyboard and mouse, not minutes on the clock. Leave both alone for two minutes and Notchpals counts you as away, and that time is left out. The coffee you went to make, or the meeting room you walked to, isn't held against you.

Done means you are on your feet. Later is for the last line of an email: the coach tries once more 20 minutes later if you are still at the Mac, and after a second Later it drops the matter. Nothing checks whether you actually stood. Your Done is taken at its word.

Stand up isn't the only Movement visit. A repeating Stretch reminder draws on the daily allowance your whole crew shares for repeating reminders, which you size in Settings from Calm to Chatty, and a Short walk comes once a day between 1:30 and 3:30 PM. Between them they roughly cover the three rows of the table above, without the notch going off every half hour.