NASA Says Stand Up!

Every day at Count.It HQ, we do push ups. It started as a way to wake up in the afternoon — better and cheaper than coffee. And, as it happens, almost as addictive. We do sets of 20 or 25, and our goal is to hit 100 a day. Each set takes less than two minutes. What’s shocking is the difference this seemingly immaterial investment of time makes over the course of a day, or week, or, as happens, a lifetime. If you have a moment, I recommend reading Solving Sitting: A Guide to Optimizing Your Movement for Health, Longevity, & Performance by Keenan Eriksson. It seems NASA and the Russian guy who invented kettlebells both say that our simple pushup habit, or anything like it, may be the most effective thing us desk jockeys can do to avoid getting cancer and generally live longer, happier lives.

Humans weren’t designed to sit all day, and it’s killing us. Technology, like television, computers, and, um, chairs, (which Eriksson says went viral in 1818 thanks to a guy from Connecticut named Lambert Hitchcock), got us into this mess. Here’s to using tech to help solve the problem!