In the late 1980’s there was an incredible innovation that came into the business mainstream — like a bull — and it was called voicemail and — it— changed — everything. I mean everything. Oh there had been some other recent technological advances before this; yeah, fax machines were pretty cool — you could send a document from New York to California in seconds, what’s not to love about that? But voicemail altered the very fabric of our everyday jobs. It changed how we moved around, how we reacted to new information. It meant freedom.
But in order to appreciate voicemail you need to understand what work-life was like before this amazing breakthrough.
For example, the challenge with being an outside salesperson back then was that it was very difficult to actually get outside. At all. You had a desk and you had customers — that called you at your desk. They called with issues, corrections, questions, change orders, to input new orders, expedite and sometimes just to talk. It was necessary to take these calls, to react to these needs, but it was also necessary to meet with customers as well as cultivate new business. But this meant leaving your desk. And your phone.
Now we had answering machines at this time — they had been around for ten years or so and yeah, that changed things a bit. They were these big clunky tape recorders that sat on a secretary’s desk and recorded any general phone messages that came in after hours. So even if you called in late — even at midnight — you could leave a message. But voicemail was so much better.
Because the thing with voicemail was that you didn’t have to be physically at the tape recorder to get your message. You could be — anywhere.
If a customer called the office and you weren’t there, or if they called your voicemail directly, they left a message. Then at any payphone, at any phone at all — anywhere in the world — you could call the voicemail number, push a code and get all your messages. You could be down the street or across the country and still get your messages.
Just — like — that!
And as if a lock had been picked, as if a door was swung open, we were no longer chained to our desks. We could be on the road all the time. If we had a phone nearby we could gather our messages and take care of them from anywhere.
We had become —- mobile.
And that was just the beginning. After that came mobile phones and emails and smart phones and Bluetooth and a bunch of other things that followed. All mobile. All giving us freedom. Freedom to move — in fact a new smart phone commercial shows a a surfer sending an email — inside of a wave.
And the mobile revolution had begun.
And now —. Thirty years into this mobile movement. After we are free to be as mobile as we want to — we are the most sedentary that we have ever been. Ever. In history.
Since the beginning of time, today, at this point in our history — Americans spend more of the day sitting then ever before. Ever.
Thirty years after all of this mobility started, we now sit for most of the day. Sometimes for fifteen hours a day.
In fact, we’re mobile, we’re on the go, but we’re still sitting. We sit in the car, we sit on the plane, we sit in the airport waiting to get on the plane. We sit in the waiting room, we sit at home and of course — we sit at work.
So why is this a big deal?
Well, we were not built to sit. We were built to move. And with sitting we increase our risk of heart disease to 65% — which means that we have just given away seven years of our life by sitting. Add to that the risks of certain types of cancer.
Immediately after you sit down, the electrical activity in your muscles slows down dramatically along with your ability to burn calories. If you sit for a full 24-hour period, you experience a 40 percent reduction in glucose uptake in insulin. All of which has caused many health experts to call sitting; the new smoking.
To break that down, The American Cancer Society recently published an article stating that men who sit 6 hours a day are 48% more likely to die before their standing counterparts and women that sit this long are 94% more likely to die.
http://www.juststand.org/tabid/674/language/en-us/default.aspx
The only good news about this is that the effects are reversible.
– Stand up once an hour.
– If your driving, pull over every hour or so and stretch for a few minutes
– Walk during breaks.
– Look into standing-desks and working more while standing.
– Walk a message to a co-worker instead of sending an email.
– Park as far away as possible and walk to where you’re going.
– Exercise three times a week.
And get moving.
