The facts are in—spend all day at a desk and you’re pretty much doomed. Doomed! According to one study of 123,216 people, men who sat more than six hours per day were about 20% more likely to die during the course of the study than those who sat less than three hours per day. And women were 40% more likely to die!

So what am I, who routinely sits in front of my computer for more than a dozen hours a day, supposed to make of this, especially since I could apparently exercise all night without making up for the damage caused by sitting all day?

My pal (and current boss) Craig Engler’s solution was to get himself a standing desk at the office and a TreadDesk—that’s right, a treadmill desk, for walking while working—at home, and both of those tempted me. (You can check out pics of his set-up here.) But since I love my glass desk, I hesitated at replacing it with a standing desk, so my thoughts went more to that TreadDesk idea.

While discussing with Irene whether we should purchase one, I suddenly realized—Wait a minute! We already own a treadmill. It’s got arms. I’ve got a board in the garage which would fit perfectly across those arms. And since I do my work on a laptop, my work station is easily moveable to place atop that board whenever I’m in the mood. I could just put ’em together. Right?

Right.

Voila!

It’s not the prettiest solution, but if it gets me up from my desk during the mid-afternoon for an hour without interfering with work, that’s all that counts.

So what I’ve been doing each day since last Thursday is walking for an hour at 2 MPH, which is slow enough for me to not even notice I’m doing it and keep typing away, but fast enough to get the blood pumping. No, it’s not an extreme aerobic workout, but that’s not what this type of exercise is for. It so that those of us who spend 12-14 or more hours each day at our computers don’t die quite as quickly as we otherwise would.

So far, it’s working. Hey, I’m still alive, aren’t I?