Early retirement an indulgence too far

Being deskbound, it seems, is about the worst thing you can do to your body. You’d burn more energy fidgeting or chewing gum

DO YOU slump at your desk allowing your shoulders to droop and your torso to concertina and deflate so that by teatime you feel like the hunchback of Notre Dame? Do your knees and neck need unlocking by close of business? Are you in fact shrinking? If so, join the club.

My posture has gone to pot and I can't even blame the chair. A few years back when things were flush, Irish Timesstaff were issued with the finest in seating arrangements, viz the Aeron chair. It's a highly supportive arrangement with armrests and wheels and height-adjusting levers. It tips right back in a way that allowed us, once upon a time, to put our feet up on the desks, cradle phones under chins and generally act like Woodward and Bernstein.

Oh, those were the days.

Now it seems to me that office deportment has gone the way of the economy, droopy and downwards. People no longer swing and swivel. Instead, they hunch at their desks all day long, only stopping to eat huge dripping sandwiches while gazing into their screens. They crouch in their cubicles, working longer hours for less pay, occasionally spilling coffee all over their notes or upending their keyboards to dislodge crumbs and scurf from their stress-induced itchy scalp. It’s an ergonomic nightmare.

With no end in sight.

The Government has announced that we are all going to have to work longer before being allowed to retire, but tell us something we didn’t already know, Brian. It’s not news, it’s a pet topic these days at . . . well, I was about to say dinner parties but who’s having those? Let’s just say kitchen suppers where breadwinners gather to discuss a range of slightly depressing topics relating to cash flow. Someone always ends up announcing that that they will have work until they are 90 to keep their household going.

There’s nothing unique about this situation. It’s happening all over the world and it’s been coming for a long time. What the Economist magazine has dubbed the Silver Tsunami was well on its way before the recession hit. The workforce is getting older, and the means of supporting retirees is shrinking. Governments and employers are having to come up with ways of keeping people employed, if only to avoid the huge shortfall in pension funding. Early retirement will soon seem like one of those impossibly indulgent things we used to do, like smoking on planes. Like it or not, workers will have to keep on working. The question is, can we, without physically seizing up at the workstation?

Not everyone has given in to droopy-shoulders syndrome. Some colleagues have managed to stay upright through the downturn. These are the people who are perpetually in motion, conducting phone calls while walking the length of the open-plan office, or pacing up and down the back stairs rather than huddling over their handsets at their desks. It can seem like arrogance, this striding around as if they own the room, but in fact it turns out to be best practice for the body.

"Stand up while you read this," ordered the New York Timesrecently in an article explaining that no matter how much exercise you take outside the office, the good work is undone if you sit down for most of the day. Staying at the desk for hours without a break puts you at a greater risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and a whole host of cancers, not to mention early death.

Sitting down, it seems, is about the worst thing a body can do in a day. You’d burn more energy fidgeting or chewing gum. By comparison, standing is hard work, it engages muscles in the back and shoulders as well as in the legs, even more so if you shift from foot to foot, better still if you stride to and fro. Doesn’t it also cause varicose veins though?

So here's the dilemma. How do you spend hours at the office and not put yourself at risk of some horrible disease? The answer, as outlined by the NYT, involves taking lots of short breaks, which will madden your manager, but improve your sugar and fat metabolism no end.

Here is my own tip for including exercise in the working day. Arrange lunch with a friend in a location far from the office. Forget all about it until five minutes before you are due to meet. Take stairs two at a time to exit the building. Look in vain for a taxi. Decide you are damned if you are going to spend €8 to inhale chemical freshener and hear about driver’s son emigrating to Canada.

Set off at a gallop while texting to say you are nearly there. Arrive out of breath but with brain cells aerated for fresh intake of news. Later, do it all in reverse. Stand around for ages telling people what you heard at lunch, or better still sit on the edge of their desks, swinging legs. This will also madden your manager. Realise you are now late in and rush to bus/Dart/closing carpark. The day flies by and perhaps disease is held at bay. Who knows?