Pillar · 9 of 12
Move
Yes / no, once a day
Note: Each of these pillars is personal, one of the things that make you you, so I'd recommend changing their contents. I'll keep what I write about the pillars short.
"The Move pillar"
I used to think that everyone, after a certain amount of time, naturally wants to move, but then I met people who end the day without taking 500 steps and stare at screens for hours without shifting from their seat. I can't. Full stop. Unless I've got into a flow and lost myself in writing a story (see "The Write pillar"), or I'm in a computer game or a meeting where people would curse me if I left, I can't stay still. Some of the activities I count as "done" for this exercise:
- Yoga: especially the kinds that get my pulse up.
- Exercise: calisthenics such as press-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups; running, the gym and so on.
- On days without exercise, a walk of at least half an hour, ideally an hour or more.
Research
Research: Move
Exercise and depression, what sitting does and does not do, and why "sitting is the new smoking" is wrong.
These notes are a starting point for the author's own reading; nothing here is medical advice.
A meta-analysis that corrected for publication bias still found a large effect of exercise on depressive symptoms (Schuch and colleagues 2016). On sitting: a harmonised analysis of data from more than a million people found that long sitting hours go with a higher risk of dying earlier, and that 60 to 75 minutes a day of moderate activity removes most of that risk (Ekelund and colleagues 2016). The popular line that "sitting is the new smoking" does not hold up when the two risks are compared side by side; smoking is far more dangerous (Vallance and colleagues 2018). An earlier draft of this exercise repeated that line; this version does not. Ratey (2008) is the readable book on what exercise does for the brain.
References
- Schuch, F. B., and colleagues (2016). Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis adjusting for publication bias. Journal of Psychiatric Research.
- Ekelund, U., and colleagues (2016). Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women. The Lancet.
- Vallance, J. K., and colleagues (2018). Evaluating the evidence on sitting, smoking, and health: Is sitting really the new smoking? American Journal of Public Health.
- Ratey, J. J., with Hagerman, E. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Little, Brown.
Notes last touched October 16, 2026