With more time spent on Zoom calls while you work from home, watching Netflix (instead of painting the town red) or just whiling the hours away glued to your mobile phone screen, your eyes have it the worst. They get itchy and tired, watery or overly dry and in some cases, develop blurry or double vision along with redness, grittiness and headaches!
Before your condition and eyesight get worse, here are some easy tips to keep your eyes strain-free.
Distance Is Good
Avoid gazing too closely at your laptop or mobile phone; an arm’s length away from your laptop is a good gauge.
Blue Light
Download or install a blue light filter in your devices as this will help reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen and thus, decrease eye strain. You won’t feel so tired as well, as the filter helps to reduce the production of melatonin.
Less Is Better
Brightly lit computer screens tend to cause eye strain, especially so if you are reading from a screen in the dark. Rule of thumb: if your surrounding light is dimmer than your screen, reduce the brightness of your screen. Close your windows or pull the blinds to reduce surrounding light and glare as well. You can also try and use a matte screen filter which will help reduce the contrast levels of your screen which creates glare.
Blink Blink
Research has shown that people tend to blink less when looking at a screen for long periods of time – sometimes by a third to half the rate!
To avoid strain on your eye muscles, blink for 10 seconds if you’re working on the laptop for ten minutes, or 20 seconds for 20 minutes. This helps to avoid reading or staring for too long while working and relaxes your eye muscles. Blinking also helps to keep your eyes lubricated.
Lubricate More
If you read a lot without breaks or spend too much time working in front of a computer screen, your eyes tend to get dry from gazing/reading too long. And dry eyes can worsen with time; it decreases your reading speed which in turn worsens the dryness. Eye drops will help but a better long-term solution would be to limit your time in front of screens.
The 20 Rule
The American Academy of Ophthalmology has a simple tip to help relax your eyes: take more frequent breaks from your screen! They recommend the 20-20-20 rule: for every 20 minutes of screen time, look at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Make this part of your daily work routine.
Reduce Screen Time
It’s quite normal for people to be glued to a screen for hours in a day – from the laptop (for work) to the TV screen (for relaxation) to the mobile phone (for news and chat updates before bed). Without a break, your eyes will be strained. Create a schedule and routine where you have hours in between where you are away from your devices: Take a walk or jog in the park, chill out listening to some music or do some simple home exercises like stretches. Giving your eyes some rest from screens is beneficial in the short and long run.
How do you rest your eyes while you WFH? Share your tips with us at magnsman@sph.com.sg!
