Habits & desk health
Sitting time calculator
Add up the hours you spend sitting each day and see how your total compares with common guidance and how often to stand up.
Count all sitting: desk, meals, commuting, sofa and screen time. Standing counts as not sitting even if you are not moving.
How your sitting time is measured
Add up every seated hour in a typical day — work, meals, travel and leisure — and the calculator turns it into a weekly total (daily hours × days) and a share of your waking day (sitting ÷ waking hours × 100). It also counts a stand-up break for roughly every 30 minutes seated, the interval many ergonomics guides suggest for interrupting long sitting, and shows how far your day runs over a simple 8-hour reference that is easy to picture.
Worked example: 9 hours of sitting across a 16-hour waking day, 7 days a week. That is 9 × 7 = 63 hours a week, or 56% of your waking time spent seated. Nine hours is one hour over the 8-hour reference, and at a break every half hour it implies about 18 short stand-ups through the day to keep the sitting broken up.
| Sitting per day | Per week | Share of a 16 h day | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 h | 28 h | 25% | Lower |
| 6 h | 42 h | 38% | Moderate |
| 8 h | 56 h | 50% | Moderate |
| 10 h | 70 h | 63% | Higher |
| 12 h | 84 h | 75% | Higher |
Breaking up the sitting
This is general wellbeing information, not a medical diagnosis. There is no official hour-by-hour limit on sitting, but public-health bodies such as the World Health Organization advise replacing sedentary time with activity of any intensity, and much research suggests that how often you break up sitting matters as much as the daily total. Long unbroken stretches appear to be the real concern, so standing, stretching or walking for a minute or two every half hour is a practical target the break count above is built around.
Small changes add up: take calls on your feet, walk to a colleague instead of messaging, stand on the commute, and get up at the end of each episode or chapter in the evening. Meeting daily activity guidelines — around 150 minutes of moderate movement a week — offsets much, though not all, of the risk linked to a lot of sitting. If you have pain, swelling, circulation problems or a health condition that affects how long you can sit or stand, treat these numbers only as a prompt and check with a doctor about what is right for you.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a day is too much sitting?
There is no official cut-off, but many adults sit 8 to 10 hours a day, and health bodies suggest reducing and breaking up long sitting rather than aiming at a single number.
How often should I stand up when sitting all day?
A common suggestion is to stand or move for a minute or two every 30 minutes. For a 9-hour sitting day that is roughly 18 short breaks, enough to interrupt long unbroken stretches.
Does exercise cancel out sitting all day?
Meeting activity guidelines offsets much of the risk linked to heavy sitting but may not remove it entirely. Breaking up sitting through the day is recommended alongside regular exercise.