So maybe you don’t have time to go to Zumba class before work, or walk at lunch, or hit the gym for a cardio workout after 6. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a good workout in in between. Current thinking from the health and fitness world is that bursts of exercise as brief as 10 minutes can boost your cardio fitness. So if you’re wondering if these little things really can make a difference, yes, they can.

Thus, our new occasional feature, Do This, Not That. As in, Do take the Stairs, not the elevator. Or, do park at the far end of the lot, not next to the door. Or, don’t sit in the La-Z-Boy to watch your favorite sitcom, sit on an exercise ball. Little things all, but little things that if done regularly can do wonders for you in seven different ways, according to the Mayo Clinic. Keeping active, states the Mayo Clinic, can — drum roll, please: 1. Improve your mood, 2. Combat Chronic Disease, 3. Help with weight management, 4. Boost energy levels, 5. Make you sleep better, 6. “Put the spark back in your sex life,” 7. Inject fun into your life. (For details, go here.) We’ll start the Do This, Not That series with a classic.

Do this: Take the stairs Not that: The elevator

Make a difference? Say you work on the third floor of an office building and swear off the elevator in favor of the stairwell. Between arriving for work in the morning, running to meetings, going to lunch and leaving at day’s end, let’s say you spend 10 minutes a day in the stairwell. According to our handy fitness calculator if you weigh 170 pounds you’ll burn 103 calories over the course of a day. Do that five days a week, 50 weeks a year (two weeks off for good behavior) and that’s 25,750 calories a year. Since you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat, that means that everything else aside, you could drop more than 7 pounds in a year just by taking the stairs.

Study this: Participants in a study by the University of Missouri and University of Copenhagen were asked to limit the number of steps they took daily to 1,400. (It’s recommended that you take at least 10,000 steps a day, though the average American takes fewer than 7,500.) After two weeks, the participants’ glucose and fat levels increased significantly and it took longer to clear the gunk from their bloodstreams.

Save time: It may not just seem like the elevators in your building are slow, they are. At least they’re slower than you, according to a study at the University of South Carolina, where elevator riders and stair climbers timed their respective ascents and descents over a period of time. Turned out taking the elevator took about twice as long as the stairs, mainly because of the wait involved. So, show up for that crucial presentation on time with a little glow or late and looking suspiciously fresh. Your choice.

Benefits: Good, condensed cardio exercise that burns calories and can help combat high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Added benefit: Want the Reebok butt without dropping $125 on a pair of shoes? Take the stairs and you’ll be the one saying, “Dude … Excuse me?”

Fountain of youth? Take the stairs and you could wind up like Cal State Northridge professor Ronnie Guie, who 19 years ago took some coworkers up on their offer to spend the lunch hour climbing stairs in their 10-story building. He’s been doing stairs as his main form of exercise ever since, which has helped the 59-year-old retain his boyish 30-inch waist and 155-pound frame.

And who knows … Climbing stairs could even be your stairway to fame, as it has been for 25-year-old Thomas Dold of Stuttgart, Germany, who last week won the 33rd Annual Empire State Building Run-Up for the fifth time.  His time last Tuesday to scamper up the 1,576 steps to the Empire State Building’s 86th floor observation deck: 10 minutes and 16 seconds.

Next Do This, Not That: “Two and a Half Men” and an Exo Ball.

Photo: Today, a flight of stairs, tomorrow the Empire State Building.