[musashibaka]

The most effective hack is to just step away from the computer for an hour or two. Go for a walk, run, hell take up a martial art or two and meet people outside of you usual circle of friends while being physically active. Now that's a hack!

[tptacek]

Pedantic drone: there is significant evidence that standing desks are worse for you than sitting desks (both standing and sitting are unhealthful; like you said, moving around is the answer --- you don't even need to move strenuously!).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4248025

[drivingmenuts]

There is some anecdotal evidence that some people work at jobs where taking an hour-long break (except for lunch) is pretty much guaranteed to net you a weeks-long+ break in employment.

[bryanlarsen]

IIRC, there have been some studies that show that show that people who have jobs that require them to stand all day are healthier than those who sit all day, even if the sitters regularly exercise and the standers don't.

[jbattle]

Were the sitters and standers otherwise performing comparable work? (such as typing and staring at a screen) Or were they moving around a work station, moving physical objects, etc.

[mietek]

Men's Health [1]:

"In a British study published in 1953, scientists examined two groups of workers: bus drivers and trolley conductors. At first glance, the two occupations appeared to be pretty similar. But while the bus drivers were more likely to sit down for their entire day, the trolley conductors were running up and down the stairs and aisles of the double-decker trolleys. As it turned out, the bus drivers were nearly twice as likely to die of heart disease as the conductors were.

A more recent interpretation of that study, published in 2004, found that none of the participants ever exercised. But the two groups did sit for different amounts of time. The analysis revealed that even after the scientists accounted for differences in waist size—an indicator of belly fat—the bus drivers were still more likely to die before the conductors did."

This looks like the Morris studies referenced in TRF [2] and BCMJ [3].

[1]: http://my.menshealth.com/exclusive-content/sentenced-chair

[2]: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/iprc/documents/bus_driver_wellbeing.pd...

[3]: http://www.bcmj.org/article/exercise-and-heart-review-early-...

[tzs]

If those are the studies I'm thinking of, they looked at people who sit continuously for several hours. Bad things happen to them, even if they exercise regularly when not sitting.

Best is to sit in a good ergonomic position, and about every 30 minutes get up and move around for a couple of minutes. Take a walk around the office, or go get a drink or something--the key is to get moving.

Do that and you'll beat both the long sitters and the long standers.

[lwat]

Yes a study showed that sitting for more than 6 hours a day increases mortality even if you excercise regularly.