This also bothers me. There's something soul-sucking about screens once you spend more than 4 or so hours in front of one. And because I can't really put my finger on what it is about screens that has this effect, I can't come up with even a sci-fi version of a solution to this problem.

The closest I've come to even an inkling of a solution is the idea of a high-refresh-rate e-ink display and doing everything in a fullscreen terminal, because somehow my kindle doesn't have the "screen" effect on me. But I'm really not sure if this would actually be helpful, let alone plausible.