Ash HN: How do you handle looking at the screen for long hours? | Hacker News Reader

Ash HN: How do you handle looking at the screen for long hours?

7 pointstheSage22 comments

Some measures I take include breaks after 20-30 minutes, wearing caps, dvorak and, using flux like software.

What measures do you take and recommend to prevent damage to health due to usage of computers over long periods?

Generally I don't finding using a computer for very long periods to be much of a problem. Granted I am still young. I found that sometimes typing for long periods made my hands hurt. I have done a few modifications to make my experience nicer:

- Mechanical keyboard, cherry MX blues - Dvorak keyboard layout - Tiling window manager - Dark color themes for night

Thats about it.

For eye strain specifically - f.lux on all computers, Night Shift on my iPhone, and anti-glare coated glasses. Combine that with getting up every 20 minutes to walk for a few minutes.

Additionally, I use some good quality eye drops like Systane Balance which help lubricate my eyes when I wake up and before bed.

A new thing I've been trying to do for multiple reasons is write out my designs on pen/paper before sitting down at the computer. This has helped with eye strain and also helped me better clarify my ideas instead of sitting at my computer and "wandering" through the problem space in my IDE.

How effective is anti glare? I was thinking of getting those since I already wear spectacles.

I think it's something that must be added when you get a new pair before they've been used. Given my far above average* number of hours spent on a computer, I've never had a pair of glasses that didn't have anti-glare.

*compared to the general population

I think anti-glare is helpful. For a while I had a pair of glasses with and a pair without and I definitely preferred anti-glare on work days.

It is something that is added when they make the lenses.

I also wear anti-glare lenses and find them to be helpful.

I use Refresh Optive Advanced in the morning for my dry eyes, and take a high quality fish oil supplement (Minami).

Last but not least, I sleep. A lot. Once in a while I will stay up late watching TV, but then my eyes really feel it the next day.

I also use f.lux. Or I'll mix it up with my pair of Gunnar glasses which accomplish the same thing.

What options are out there for Android? I think the ones I used were Lux and Nightwatch. Not a huge fan of them.

I found adjusting lighting around the screens helpful. I can't comment on any heath-related pros or cons as this is not scientific.

Specifically, adjusting ambient lighting near my desk that is brighter/darker than the displays.

I work at night a lot and try to keep a couple lamps on - not work in a dark room. Likewise, I work near a window during the day but added a pull-down perforated window screen to allow sun in but dull (~25%) of the bright sunlight.

My eyes looked off screen more than I realized and adjusting ambient lighting feels like it reduced eye strain and reduced time to return to focus.

This is pretty good. I didn't realize how different my ambient lighting was from my screen.

I recommend buying a vertical mouse if you're doing a lot of precision mouse work. I generally don't consider surfing the web precision work, and I can offload a lot of muscle twitching to the scroll button.

You can use ambient lighting which changes color to match what's on the screen. This is a well known technique to reduce eye strain.

Grab yourself a decent chair with memory foam padding. A lot of the pain that comes from sitting is in the lower back, so it's absolutely crucial that the lower back is looked after.

A lot of the other comments regarding breaks and eye strain are generally fine, but can be overdone very easily. Flux + eyeglasses + antiglare screen covers combined together can be overkill.

Try to use autofill as much as possible and isolate applications so everything is not in one place and thus difficult to find. For example, I have one browser for Reddit, one browser for hackernews, one browser for casual surfing, etc. I'm pretty sure an SSD can handle multiple contextual browser like this and it doesn't take long to split a browser up like this, and believe me it's worth it!

How does splitting the browsers help?

It makes it easier to surf different sites, as each browser is tailored for specific content. So on Reddit, I can disable images globally and it only affects Reddit and not other sites. And the bookmarks menu doesn't have to be a cluttered mess either. You can do this easily in Chrome by creating different profiles. In Firefox you can do it by switching profiles. It helps because I find it's easier to navigate the web

One side benefit of the pomodoro technique (focus for 25 minutes, then take a break for 5 minutes) is that it gives you a good excuse to get up and look away from the screen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Most obvious one for me is I try to do as much work as possible (where work = typing) in dark mode, i.e., amber or colored type on a black background.

I wish there was an acceptable way to view web pages in dark mode, but the vast majority of web sites look like garbage and are functionally unusable if you change their color scheme.

I rarely read long documents on a monitor. If it's something that will take longer than 2 or 3 minutes to read, I will print it and read it away from the computer.

Other than that, I just try to make sure I take breaks, and one thing I've trained myself to do is to recognize when I'm pondering something and to turn my head/body away from the monitor and look at something 10 or 20 feet away while I'm pondering.

In addition to f.lux and Night Shift as others have mentioned, I'm using a Mac menu bar app called Awareness [1] that reminds you to take breaks regularly.

The Pomodoro style timing of 20+5 never really worked for me. I found a lot of my light tasks need 5–10 minutes while for serious dev tasks, 45 minutes of work is a better period of time to dig in deeply and get something done. Then I'll take a longer break of 10–20 minutes to balance that out. If I'm really in the zone at the 45-minute mark, I'll go ahead a plunge through a second 45-minute period without stopping.

[1]: http://iamfutureproof.com/tools/awareness/

One other big thing I forgot: computer glasses. I'm old enough that I need reading glasses (I don't have to have them, but they help), and I actually got a pair of reading glasses calibrated specifically for reading at a distance of ~24 inches, i.e., monitor distance. I call them my computer glasses. I think that was the term my optometrist used too. They are a huge benefit; I can't even hardly look at my monitor for more than a few minutes without them.

I have mild myopia/astigmatism and also use a different prescription for computer use than for distance. Using my distance glasses at monitor distance gives me an eye-strain headache, but without glasses I get a headache from squinting and back pain from leaning in to keep my nose 8 inches from the screen.

10 years ago it took some persuading to get an optometrist or ophthalmologist to prescribe something like that, but nowadays it seems to be routine.

Even if you are able to get by in daily non-computing life without glasses, that doesn't mean they couldn't reduce eye strain. Focusing a couple feet away means engaging your eye muscles pretty strenuously unless you have moderate myopia. And a lot of people have astigmatism without even knowing it.

I'm using an app that blocks my screen at the interval I set. But it has the option to skip that break with a single click. When I'm focused on reading something important I dont even rember if it was me the person who skipped absolutely all breaks for 8 hours. But when I watch a video, that app must be disabled.

I think the best option is not software but hardware. For example when I need to wake up early in the morning, I put my alarm clock 3 meteres away from my bed, so the other ME doesnt turn it off.

This might be a bit weird but I find washing my face with water helps. When you get a chance wash your face with water and if possible try not to dry it too much afterwards, a bit of moisture sticks around for a while and helps your eyes.

Just curious to hear if anyone has considered something like Philips Hue bulbs to adjust light temperature and intensity with fine-grained control around their desk / office (for example, as a complement to f.lux).

I get less eye strain when I wear contact lens instead of glasses.

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