A quick cautionary tale today, about taking care of your eyes.

Yesterday morning I got on the subway in Bangkok, and then the train, and then sat in the airport, and then on a plane.  I tried to stick with podcasts for all this sitting around, but phone close-up did accumulate.  Phone close-up is especially no good, since you tend to hold a phone way closer than the distance you’d use with your computer screen.

Jakey also didn’t use plus lenses.  Because, bad Jake.

Then arrive in Hong Kong at 6pm, eat, head to the hotel.  Get sucked into answering e-mails, sitting on a bed, at totally not the maximum screen distance.  No plus lenses either.  Four hours later, five hours later, eventually get some not so great sleep.

Wake up at 11AM, realize it’s stormy rain outside, don’t even leave the room, get back to work.  Really, there’s enough work to keep a dozen Jakes busy for the next decade.  

2:30PM, rain finally stops.  Finally make it outside.

Can you add up how many hours of close-up this is so far?  Also the room has a window, but most of the time it was either dark outside, or almost dark since it’s not exactly and expansive vista type of hotel situation.  So we’ve got artificial light, computer too close, and hours and hours (and hours) of close-up.

Guess what happened by the time I got outside?

It’s heavily overcast.  When you overstrained your ciliary to a point that should just be criminal on the negligence level, you generally need a nice big burst of great outdoor sunlight, to jumpstart your eyes.  (ever notice that?)

There’s no decent sunlight and I get no jumpstart.

I’d say I was around -0.50 at the very least, all day.  I couldn’t shake it.  All active focus was a mess, double vision all over the place, and everything being in perpetual dusk didn’t help things one bit.  At this rate it’s going to take me two days to get my eyes back to normal.  Or grab some plus as a quick cheat.  Or not spend all of tonight working.

What’s the point of this entire missive?

If what I just did yesterday and today is the story of your life, every day, then you’re hugely mistreating your eyes.  It takes just a day or two to go from great vision to where an enterprising optometrist would tempt you with a small minus, given all the (wrong) planets aligning.  

And if you slowly work your way from this scenario, to one that involves nice full spectrum light, some simple habit changes to get you outside, and not working all night with a screen 30cm from your eyes, then you’re already halfway to not wearing nerd goggles for the rest of your life.

Get the close-up strain under control, and all you’ve got left to accomplish is learning about positive stimulus (and the pieces that go with that).  Control strain with good habits, challenge your eyes for some good stimulus, and before long you won’t have any myopia problems at all.

And now excuse these cranky eyes, time to get away from the screen.  (and on to some sushi treats!)

Non-blurry version of the headline image, the night time Hong Kong skyline, over on the semi-secret Jakey Instagram.  (along with a rather less than frugal way to get away from work for a few hours)

Cheers,

-Jake