AP 0713: How Do I Keep My Eyes Healthy When I Spend All Day in Front of a Computer?

AskPat 713 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 713 of AskPat, thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

Alright, now here's today's question from Zubin.

Zubin: Hi Pat, Zubin here. I am an engineer based out of Tennessee, Nashville. Love your site, on this day have been following it for quite some time now. Starting an online business has been one of the most challenging things for me, my personal life, my professional life, everything. So, today's question, it won't be like the regular type nickel ones, it's a little bit qualitative. So I hope you answer it because you have been in this place for a very long time.

My question basically is, I run my online business and I am on my laptop all day long. I do all kinds of stuff with my website, with my email, with reaching out to my subscribers, tons and tons of experiments and all kinds of stuff. So I am on my laptop all day long. It really is frustrating at times. What happens is, my eyes start to pain and I cannot stay in front of my laptop because my eyes constantly start to pain. Obviously you are no doctor to offer me advice, but I would like to have your suggestion as to what sort of things have you done or do you try in order for yourself to keep your eyes not strained out. Again, thanks for the question. I mean, I hope you answer my question and I look forward for your answers. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up Zubin, thank you so much for this question. I really think it's a great one because we don't really talk about this much. When you are working, whether it's working in your own business for yourself or for somebody else, when you're on a computer, it actually takes a lot out of you. You're just sitting there, which sometimes you might feel like, “Oh, well I'm not using that much energy.” But something like eye strain is something we don't talk about very much, so I'm very glad you brought this up.

And I, in fact, do a lot of things to help myself in that regard. Here's some of the things that I do. First of all, my screen resolution. I actually have on my screen the fonts a little bit bigger than one might normally have. I do that purposefully because I just wanted to make it easier for me when I'm reading things. Especially things like blog posts and content, or spreadsheets or things like that. I always put the view higher than 100 percent when I'm reading PDF files. I just make it really easy for me. If you're doing coding or something like that, try to bump up the screen resolution. Or I guess that would be bringing it down a little bit to make everything bigger, or at least increase the view percentage or the magnification on whatever it is you're working on.

So that's the first thing that's going to help you stop your from—you know one of the things that happens when fonts are small or just hard to see is you start to squint. Squinting helps you see better but it also uses muscles in and around your eyes. Like you said, I'm not a doctor, but this is just what I know and it can take a lot out of you. You can get tired and your eyes can strain. Some people get to the point where they just can't look at a screen anymore.

For me, I do a couple other things. I use a tool called Flux. The URL to get that is at JustGetFlux.com. I know there's a version of it for Windows as well, but this is for Mac. It's free to use. What's cool is that, especially for night, and it actually relates to sleep as well, it adjusts automatically the brightness and the tint of your screen throughout the day so that you're not getting that blue glow the whole time. Even if you are on the phone, I believe the iPhone now does this automatically, or you can set it to have it do this automatically for you, but I believe that's called nightshift. The idea is the same, it removes the blue light, which can strain your eyes and also makes it really difficult to sleep. So one thing I do is I use nightshift on my phone or on my computer I use flux at JustGetFlux.com. Again it's completely free. Depending on where the sun is on your location, it will change the tint on the screen you're looking on. It's cool because you don't even notice it's changing until you turn it off and then it's just bright as day. And it's like, “Wow, I cant believe the computer screen can be so bright.” So it changes when it needs to change based on science, based your eyes and biology. So check that out, that's really cool. JustGetFlux.com

Then lastly, the thing I would suggest is to take breaks every once in a while. I would give yourself five to ten minutes every hour at least to not look at the computer. To look at stuff that's far away. That's another thing I've noticed is that when I'm looking at something and focusing on something so close to me, the things that are very far away, down the street or on the other side of the house, are blurry to me, then I have to strain even more to look at those things. So I give myself time to take a break with my eyes. Even getting some rest or power naps throughout the day can be really helpful too.

So I hope that answers your question, gives you some thoughts. Just keep up the good work but also give yourself rest because you need your eyes. You need them to be healthy, you need to see whatever it is you're looking in order to do the work you need to do. So lets take care of them now so we can have them for longer. Best of luck and thank you. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having a question featured here on the show.

For those of you listening, if you have a question that you would like to have featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much.

To finish of, as always, I love to end with a quote. This quote is from a good friend, Gary Vaynerchuk. He says, “Social media is not a fad, because it's human.”

All right, take care humans. I appreciate you and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. Bye.