But, lemme tell ya, trying to make 10,000 steps each day is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. And while I don't purport to be a fitness expert, I've developed some tips that can help anyone who is trying to commit to a similar goal but works a job that keeps them stuck at a desk all day.

BUT WAIT! Just because I'm calling it a Fitbit-related goal, it doesn't mean that these tips aren't applicable to ANYONE who is trying to keep fit but is having a rough go of it due to work. Anyone can use these tips. Trust me! Read on.

The key to this sort of goal is inefficiency. Yes, you read that correctly... INefficiency. You need to become as inefficient as humanly possible. I don't mean that you never get stuff done. Oh, you will. You just need to rethink how.

• If your office has multiple bathrooms, use the one farthest from your desk (so long as your bladder can hold out).
• If you park in the closest space possible to the entrance, don't. Park farther away and walk. Say you're an executive with reserved parking, use that reserved space as a bonus to an employee that is doing a good job. You gain fitness points as well as some respect from your underlings.
• If you have stairs and an elevator, take the stairs. Even if you just take the stairs down and elevator up, it's still a net benefit to your step count.
• If you have a huge water bottle that you fill up only once or twice a day, either don't fill it up all the way or buy a smaller bottle so you have to make more trips to the water cooler/sink.
• If you are going to call or email a coworker in your office, walk to their desk instead.
• If you are delivering something to the desks of three coworkers, don't take them all in one trip. Deliver one, return to your desk, lather, rinse, repeat.
• If you are taking stairs from, say, the first to the third floor and there is another floor or two above, take the stairs all the way to the top (within reason) and then return down to the floor you need.
• Take the long way around when walking anywhere.
• Try to go to lunch at places within walking distance.
• Find quiet, relatively unused conference rooms or auditoriums where you can take a quick break to walk circuits. We have meeting rooms that don't always have something scheduled, and I go there and walk them a few times around just to get the blood flowing. One room will give me 150 steps per round including a flight of stairs and the other gives me about 70.

Some tips that don't apply to me, per se, but could help some other people include:

• If you take a bus, subway, or taxi as part of your commute and can afford the time to walk at least part of the way, do it.
• In an airport, walk instead of using the people mover tracks or trams (unless the backasswards layout that most airports have necessitates using one of those methods instead).
• Start a walking club at work with coworkers. You get enough people involved and bosses may take very kindly and sanction or encourage it as part of the workday like how the Japanese did calisthenics at the start of each work day in the movie Gung Ho. That's real, people. The good thing is that to walk, you don't need to have showers

People have seen me doing some of these things and have questioned why it seems like I'm going a little out of my way to do something. I'm honest with them and tell them exactly what I'm doing and why ("I've got a goal of 10,000 steps/5 miles to walk each day because I want to be around for as much of Nathan's life as humanly possible") and they always seem to understand.

Got any other ideas to add to the list?