Guide · body · 3 min read
Tired eyes after a long day of screens — an honest guide, when the house is busy
Eye strain is mostly about distance and blinking, not about blue light glasses.
Start here
The order matters less than doing the first one tonight. Start there and come back to the rest.
It works with other people in the house. You do not need silence.
If you only do one thing from this page, do the first point below. It is first because it removes the most friction for the least effort.
What helps
Your eyes focus at one distance all day. Look at something far away for twenty seconds every twenty minutes — out of a window, not across the room.
Move the screen slightly further away and lower than eye level. Both reduce the work your eyes are doing.
Warm, dim light in the evening is more comfortable than bright overhead light, regardless of what it does to your sleep.
What to do when it does not work
You blink about a third as often when reading on a screen. Deliberately blinking a few times re-wets the surface.
If your eyes feel gritty every day, get them tested. An uncorrected small prescription causes more strain than any screen.
Use a bigger font instead of leaning closer. Most people scale the font down to fit more on screen, then pay for it.
Questions people ask
Are eye exercises useful?
The "look far away" break is. Most other eye exercises have very little evidence behind them.
Written for people who want the practical version. No accounts, no tracking, no newsletter wall.
If this is not the angle you need, try How to get through the first hour without your phone, in plain terms, when you have more time than usual, A morning routine that survives a bad night — the basics, done properly, when you are doing this for the first time or Ten minutes outside is not a wellness cliché, if you are doing this in the middle of the day.