Some things you want to do take a long time to finish. Others only take a few minutes or so. How to balance that? Here’s an idea.

First, have two lists of what you want to do every day. One list for big projects and one for small to-dos.

Then start your day by working for one hour straight on a long project. After an hour, if you’ve been sitting down, get up and do some of the smaller projects around your space. This will rest your mind and your eyes and stretch your body. If there is nothing you can think of to do for about ten minutes while standing, do some stretching exercises. You can do many things standing that you often do sitting. Make phone calls, sort the mail, file, and of course, if you’re keeping house, any chore will fill the time. Sit down for another, now fifty minutes, and work, then get up again for ten.  I do it this way because it’s easier to keep track of using “on the hour” time than trying to remember, was it ten minutes past or twenty minutes of the hour, or . . .? If you’ve been standing for an hour, take a break and do sitting-down chores for ten minutes.

If you can’t think of anything to do for those ten minutes or run out of chores by the end of the day after sitting for hours, well, then, dance.