By job · 12 tips
Sitting too long, constant interruptions and endless meetings, plus a tip about being bullied at work.
People who sit the most have 2.6 times the chance of dying over the same period of people who sit the least. Sitting for a long time in one stretch adds a separate risk. But with 60–75 minutes of moderate activity a day, the extra risk from sitting is mostly canceled out.
People who walk about 7800 steps a day have about a 45% lower chance of dying over the same period than people who walk only 3500. Counted by time it is the same: 150–300 minutes of brisk walking a week is about 30% lower than no exercise. Beyond a certain amount the risk stops falling, and for people over 60, 6000–8000 steps is enough. Of the two ways of counting, meeting either one is enough.
People who do 30–60 minutes of strength training a week have a 10% to 20% lower chance of dying over the same period than people who don't. More than that is not better. Doing strength and aerobic exercise together works best.
People who regularly sleep less than 7 hours have about a 10% higher chance of dying over the same period. The more irregular the schedule, the higher the risk. Everyone else has a 20% to nearly 50% lower risk than the most irregular group. How regular your schedule is tells you more about the risk of death than how long you sleep.
When your phone buzzes, even if you don't look at it or touch it, your score on attention tasks drops. The drop is about the same as when you actually take a call or send a text. There is another case: if the phone is just sitting on the desk and you resist looking at it, the mental capacity you have free still shrinks. The more dependent you are on your phone, the bigger the drop.
One interruption averaging 2.8 seconds doubles the chance of making an error in the steps that follow. A 4.4-second interruption triples it. A field study also found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to get back to the interrupted task, with two other things squeezed in between. Interrupted people worked faster, but their stress, frustration and effort were all higher.
The same group of people were compared over two weeks. In the week when email checks were limited to 3 times a day, daily stress was clearly lower, while the number of emails sent and received was the same. With no limit, people checked an average of 15.5 times a day.
When background noise rose from 39 decibels to 51 decibels, people remembered fewer words, got more tired and felt less like working. During breaks, watching a nature film with sound restored energy better than continuing to listen to office noise.
The more meetings someone has in a day, the more tired they are and the more work they feel they have. When you cut one meeting, the time you save is the length of that meeting, with nothing taken off.
People are more likely to find a meeting useful if an agenda was sent beforehand. In an experiment, meetings held sitting down ran 34% longer than meetings held standing up, and the decisions made were no better or worse either way.
After this course of treatment, people fall asleep about 19 minutes faster on average, and spend about 26 minutes less awake in the middle of the night. The effect gradually weakens, but it is still there after 12 months. Online self-help courses work about as well as doing it in person. Sleeping pills help little for people over 60: for every 6 people who take them, 1 has a side effect, and only 1 in 13 sleeps better.
People who are bullied at work have about a 60% higher risk of heart disease and stroke later, and the more they are bullied, the higher the risk. People who are bullied are about twice as likely to have thoughts of suicide a few years later. Being shouted at and put down is not a small thing that passes if you grit your teeth.
This site arranged the groups and order on this page; the tips come from the book. About
