Guide · body · 3 min read
Tired eyes after a long day of screens — where to start, when the day has been loud
Eye strain is mostly about distance and blinking, not about blue light glasses.
Start here
Most of the usual advice misses the point. What follows is the version that survives contact with a real week.
For days that were loud from the moment they started.
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
Use a bigger font instead of leaning closer. Most people scale the font down to fit more on screen, then pay for it.
Warm, dim light in the evening is more comfortable than bright overhead light, regardless of what it does to your sleep.
If your eyes feel gritty every day, get them tested. An uncorrected small prescription causes more strain than any screen.
What to do when it does not work
Move the screen slightly further away and lower than eye level. Both reduce the work your eyes are doing.
You blink about a third as often when reading on a screen. Deliberately blinking a few times re-wets the surface.
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.
Questions people ask
Do blue light glasses work?
Evidence is weak. They are not harmful, but the bigger wins are distance, blinking and a decent font size.
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 Do you actually need eight glasses of water — the version that fits a real week, when you need something unremarkable, What to do when everything is too much — what works and what does not, if you are tired of apps or How to study when you cannot concentrate — where to start, if you are doing this in the middle of the day.