Moderators, my comments are in response to the articles about the dangers of sitting rather than ergonomic desks/chairs, etc. So feel free to split this to a separate thread if it seems appropriate.
When I first read these articles, I thought to myself, "This can't apply to me." I'm currently the ASM on a a musical where I alternate between running the deck and calling the show. In either instance, I stand for all but 10 minutes of the show (and that's erring on the side of over-estimating my sitting). But these articles really stuck with me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I DO sit a lot during the day.
Taking a cue from diet and financial experts who suggest tracking your daily habits to understand where you need to make changes, I kept a "sitting diary", just for one typical two-show day, from waking up to sleep. The result? 405 minutes of sitting (that's 6.75 hours - in the danger zone of 6+ hours). Despite the 5 hours of standing I do during the actual show, it was all that extra time we SMs build into our day that hurt my numbers (call time is 1.5 hours before curtain, I kill 1.5 hours between shows in the office, I sit on my subway commute into work...).
I have already made a few adjustments to my daily routine to try and keep that number down: I stand on the subway ride into work, after I check preset at half-hour, I try not to sit at my desk unless I have specific paperwork to do. Heck, I'm typing this post while standing at my kitchen counter (which is conveniently a pretty comfortable height to serve as my at-home "standing" desk).
