Working from home and barely moving? How to add movement back

If you work from home and some days your phone says you've walked a few hundred steps, you're not lazy. Working from home quietly removes most of the movement an office day had built in: the walk to the station, the stairs, the trip to the meeting room, going out for lunch. None of it felt like exercise, so nobody notices when it's gone.

The fix is to put that movement back on purpose, in the same places it used to be. A short walk before and after work in place of a commute, some calls taken on foot, a few tasks done standing, and lunch errands done on foot cover most of it. A step goal can help, as long as it stays a rough guide.

Where the movement went

It helps to see what an office day included without you trying.

• Walking to the bus, the train or the parking lot, and from it at the other end.
• Stairs at the station and in the office.
• Walking to meetings, to the kitchen, to the bathroom down the hall, to a colleague's desk.
• Going out for lunch, or at least to the store for it.
• Errands on the way home.

At home, the bed is a few steps from the desk, the kitchen is next door, and the meeting room is the same chair you were already sitting in. A day of calls can mean getting up only to refill the coffee. That is the gap you are filling, and it is mostly made of short walks spread through the day.

Give yourself a fake commute

A fake commute is a short walk at the start and end of the workday, in place of the trip you no longer make. Out of the front door, around the block or to the end of the street, and back to your desk as if you had just arrived.

It does two jobs. It adds a walk to both ends of the day, and it marks the edges of work, which is the thing many remote workers miss most. Without a commute, the workday tends to start in bed with email and end whenever you notice it's dark. A walk out and a walk back gives your head a clear "on" and "off". A morning walk also gets you some daylight early, which helps set your body clock and can make it easier to sleep at night.

To make it stick:

1. Make it short. Ten or fifteen minutes is plenty. You are replacing a habit, not training for anything.
2. Put it on the calendar. A repeating weekday event in Calendar called "Commute", with an alert, at the time you'd want to start and finish.
3. Do it in all weathers. Keep a coat and shoes by the door. A short walk in the rain is still a walk.
4. Use the evening one to close the day. When you get back, the laptop stays shut. That is the point of arriving home.

Take some calls on foot

Not every call needs your face or your screen. One-on-ones, catch-ups with people you know well, and calls where you mostly listen all work well as walking calls.

• Take the call on your phone with earbuds, and tell the other person you're out walking. Most people don't mind.
• Jot any actions on your phone, or straight after you get back.
• Choose quiet streets, or a park, so wind and traffic don't drown you out.
• Keep it to calls that genuinely don't need a shared screen. Walking while trying to follow a slide deck helps nobody.

On a heavy call day, one walking call can add more movement than anything else here.

Stand for tasks that don't need a chair

Some work is easy to do standing, and every time you stand you break up a long sit.

• Read documents or review drafts standing at a kitchen counter or a shelf at elbow height.
• Take video calls standing, if you can raise the laptop to eye level on a stack of books or a stand.
• Make phone calls pacing around the room.
• Sort email on your phone while the kettle boils.

If you find you like it, a standing desk is the next step. There's more on setting one up, and on not overdoing it, in these standing desk tips.

Do your errands at lunch, on foot

The lunch break is the biggest stretch of movement time a home workday has, and it is often spent at the desk. Use it for the errands you would otherwise drive to on the weekend or order in.

• Walk to the store for lunch, or for tonight's dinner.
• Mail the package, return the library book, pick up the prescription.
• Walk to a café to eat, if there is one near you.
• If there's nothing to do, walk anyway. A 20-minute loop after eating is a good habit in its own right, and a walk after lunch explains why.

Use a step goal without letting it run you

A step count is a decent rough guide to how much you're moving, and if you carry your iPhone, the Health app already records your steps, so you can see your daily and weekly totals without setting anything up.

The famous 10,000 figure is usually traced to a Japanese pedometer marketed in the 1960s, not to a study. Research since then suggests that the benefits start well below it and rise with more steps up to a point, and that the point seems to come sooner for older adults than for younger ones. So 10,000 is fine as a goal if you like it, but it is not a line between healthy and unhealthy.

A calmer way to use steps:

• Start from your own number. Look at your last couple of weeks. If you average 3,000 on home days, aim for 5,000, not 10,000.
• Look at the week, not the day. A day of back-to-back calls happens. The weekly average is what tells you whether things are changing.
• Don't chase the count at night. Pacing the hallway at 11 PM to hit a number is not the point.
• Remember what it misses. Cycling, swimming, stretching and carrying groceries upstairs don't show up as steps, and they all count.

Let the day remind you

Every idea above is easy to agree with and easy to forget by Tuesday. Home has none of the office's built-in prompts, so it helps to add some.

Coach Flex is one of the Movement characters in Notchpals, a loud coach who treats a lap of the kitchen like a personal best. With Coach Flex in your crew, you get a Stand up visit once you've been at the Mac for 55 minutes with no real pause. At home, with nobody walking past your desk, that can easily be the most regular prompt you get.

Coach FlexWHISTLE! Almost an hour on the bench! Coach is subbing you in! UP!

Once a day, somewhere between 1:30 and 3:30 PM, the coach also suggests a Short walk, which is a good push to go out for the loop or the errand you put off at lunch. Stretch visits turn up now and then, drawn from the crew's shared daily allowance for repeating reminders, so the notch never becomes a drill sergeant. If the timing is wrong, Later sends the coach away for 20 minutes, and it asks once more if the moment still fits.

Every crew also has a host, the member who says good morning and welcome back. Make Coach Flex the host, and when you come back from 15 minutes or more away, say a walking call or a trip to the store, you get a cheer at the door.

Coach FlexYOU'RE BACK! Rest period over! Let's get back in the game!

A home workday with the movement put back

Put together, a day might look like this:

None of it takes much time, and none of it needs a gym. It is the walking your old commute did for you, put back on purpose. For short ideas you can fit into a few spare minutes, see these movement snacks.