I am writing this while walking on a treadmill. And now you know the biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk. It’s a lot like the early days of cell-phone calls, when the simple fact that you were doing what you were doing seemed so amazing that most conversations consisted largely of exclamations about the amazingness of the call. I got my treadmill desk about three months ago, but I’m still in the announcement phase. I would like to have it be known that I have walked while buying shoes online; while Photoshopping pictures of my cats; while e-mailing my son’s soccer coach; and while paying bills. I had been eagerly awaiting the first time I would have a phone conversation with someone who was also walking at a treadmill desk. That happened not long ago, when I spoke to Dr. James Levine, the leading researcher in the marvellous-sounding field of “inactivity studies,” at the Mayo Clinic’s Scottsdale, Arizona, campus, and the most prominent of walking-desk partisans. I was already on my second mile of the day when I called him. He had just stepped out for coffee and was on his way back to his office, and he managed to open the door, put down his coffee, step onto his treadmill, and start walking without skipping a beat. “You’re going to hear a bit of an odd sound,” Levine said. “That’s my treadmill.”

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