Data from my wearable proved something uncomfortable: outside my workouts, my life was sedentary. According to my wearable, I was averaging 4,000 daily steps. A recent article presented a classification of daily steps:
- <5,000 → Sedentary
- 5,000–7,499 → Low active
- 7,500–9,999 → Somewhat active
- ≥10,000 → Active
- ≥12,500 → Highly active
I was shocked to say the least. Daily step count is a decent proxy for Non-Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA). How had I let my life get to this place when I clearly knew that lack of NEPA was an independent risk factor for a variety of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)?
At such times, I can show the traits of a Type A person — I quickly set a goal of walking 10,000 steps daily. To meet my daily target I started to take short walks between meetings. When that didn’t cut it, I put on my earphones and just went on walks during meetings. But then video calls became the norm. I got myself a treadmill to create a walking desk. Despite walking through most of my workday, my step count barely moved. The culprit was my cheap wearable that could not track my steps accurately on the treadmill. Without hesitation, I upgraded. I started hitting the 10,000-step goal regularly. But as exciting as that was, I couldn’t help thinking about how I got here.
A quick inventory of my daily life revealed the truth: this was a problem I had engineered. In the last decade, I had successively taken out tasks that required me to walk – no more walks to the local market for grocery purchases (I was relying on delivery from the shops even before quick commerce showed up), all kinds of shopping had become online, autos/taxis picked me up from where I was. Hell, my barber was also coming home.
The biggest problem was that I had convinced myself that I was better off sitting at my desk and working instead of spending time on these mundane activities. The truth was that I had traded that reclaimed time for junk content, meaningless conversations, and extra calories.
Aiming for greater productivity, I designed a life without consistent movement but filled with modern efficiency theater. I had optimized away friction. There’s a strange irony inlistening to Andrew Huberman’s health optimization protocols while remaining seated.
It was tough to remind myself — and then internalize — the value of moving my body, taking natural breaks from work, and experiencing the world when I was neither working nor consuming.
The transformation has been slow — but genuinely transformational. In choosing to move more, I recovered something I didn’t realize I had optimized away — friction, community, and a body that participates in the world instead of just sitting in front of it. I wouldn’t have needed a health influencer to remind me to move if I had simply kept walking to my barber.