I screen, you screen…

Have you discounted the Freewrite? Disclaimer: not tried it myself.

https://www.geek.com/chips/watch-a-13-inch-e-ink-monitor-in-action-then-gawk-at-the-price-1614311/

I’d guess the price has come down now.

Here’s a link: http://candorvision.com/professionals/hylo/

My wife has found a change of diet has stopped her migraines.

I’ve had some limited success using a blocking plugin for firefox (leechblock), when complemented by the following. I keep a journal open in a text editor alongside, and when I crack and hit the block, I write down in it the feelings and thoughts I had shortly before. My theory is that taking conscience of what motivates me to wander off on the net may help me devise some psychological change to have less of that. It certainly helps in that I normally can recover from the slip of attention and return to what I was doing instead of just circumventing the block and heading to twitter.

(So far I’ve noticed that current world affairs are causing me a moderate but constant level of anxiety. No idea what to do about it – changing the world does not seem a realistic option…)

The headaches and your back problems are probably related. Taking conscience of your position and sitting habits might help. Has helped me in the past.

The freewriter linked above by Henry looks very interesting.

The eyestrain/headache problem should probably be considered somewhat in isolation from the more, ah, existential perils of constant social media engagement. Some suggestions for the former ranging from “free” to “somewhat expensive”:

Others have mentioned f.lux and I concur, but let me suggest something perhaps obvious that nonetheless was conspicuous by its absence: increase your system’s default font size, possibly by a lot, on both your phone and laptop. Eyes are weird squishy things and they get weirder as you get older: once you’re past your 20s, spending all of your time reading 8-point text is probably a terrible idea. (The ability to adjust font sizes on books as I was reading them was what finally and completely sold me on e-readers.)

Also: there are a billion applications (some free, most cheap) around that will remind you to take hourly (or more frequent) breaks from your computer, even to the point of locking the keyboard for 1-5 minutes at regular intervals. They’re usually pitched for helping people avoid/treat RSIs (carpal tunnel / tendonitis) but they’re also a good plan for your eyes/back, especially if you like me tend to hunch over and squint if you’re at all engaged with your work.

Eye drops! Have a bottle next to every place you’re likely to sit down with a computer. Have one in each of your bags that you regularly carry. Use them! (Possibly every time you take a break as above.) Older eyes are dryer eyes, and dryer eyes are squintier eyes.

Then in the realm of Actual Money:

– hire someone to do an ergonomic consult on your work area. At a minimum this should involve measuring the heights, distances and angles of your desk, chair and monitor and adjusting some or all of them.

– consider buying a new monitor. Modern high-resolution monitors (“4k” models) have a pixel density approaching that of an old laser printer (270-300 dpi) and can be much more comfortable to read. They’re also often brighter and have better viewing angles. The 4k ones especially used to be viciously expensive but are recently nudging down into the sub-$350 range.

Dr. Memory makes good suggestions. A new monitor was going to be mine also. The other that hasn’t been made is to convert to a standing desk for back problems. There are various solutions for this from the free do-it-yourself kind to the expensive ones. But pain is a sign that your system is not properly configured for you.

Looking for a word-processing only machine – but they’re all extremely old and have tiny screens.

I’ve wanted something like this (and portable! ;-) for thirty years. Too bad.

Quick thoughts, haven’t read all the comments yet:

I had headaches a lot through my earlier adulthood, never had them diagnosed (thought they were sinus-related but a doc friend insisted they were migraines). They mostly disappeared with menopause and the end of child-raising. I was taken aback when I started to have migraine auras a few years ago (never had them with the headaches in earlier years), sometimes followed by headaches, sometimes not, but always followed by a sickish feeling that lasted for a day or so.

I realized after a while that the auras had started after I replaced all my incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, so I re-replaced the fluorescents with some incandescents (bought a lifetime supply from the last bin at Lowe’s) and some LEDs. Auras got very rare again.

I recently had a big lesson about food and the headaches/auras. I usually think of food first when anything goes wrong, but for some weird reason I had never considered food as a possible trigger for the headaches. But I made a pesto recipe using walnuts and parmesan (neither of which I eat much any more) and had four auras/headaches in three days. It was just awful. Then when the pesto was gone I went back to normal.

I tend to think of the computer screen as a villain in all this, but it really doesn’t seem to be. On the other hand, because of back, hip, and shoulder issues (I’m getting old!), I take breaks from the screen every 15-20 minutes anyhow.

As to the time-wasting: I laughed at novakant suggesting smoking as a way to relax at regular intervals. Back when I had my Irish girlfriend, she would have a smoke at every transition from one thing to another all day long, and sometimes on no excuse whatsoever. (Lots of smokes!) I have for a long time considered my time-wasting on the internet to be the equivalent of her cigarettes. :-) The trouble is, while smoking a cigarette may take what, seven minutes or so? — wasting time on the internet can easily expand to fill and hour.

Recently I’ve started simply leaving the computer off for a good long while every morning (though I too make my living in front of it, I do work mostly at home and have lots of flexibility about hours). If migraines ruin two days out of every ten, it’s not a bad tradeoff, if you can manage it, to take good long breaks during the day when you’re actually doing the stuff we all used to do all day long before there were computers. ;-)

As for standing desks — I built some shelves and put old modular desktops on them to make standing desks in L-shapes with my sitting desks. It was my dream for a long time! But — my knees are wrecked so, as it turns out, I can’t stand in front of the screen for long at a time either.

Hasty, sorry if I’ve duplicated what other people have said.

A large, comfortable chair with armrests and headrests. A big desk, that lets you stretch your arms forward in front of the screen. No clutter. Wireless mouse, or a bungee line wired.

A window just to the side, so you can glance out and refocus. Light, fresh coloured walls and flooring. I like a couple of green plants, too.

A decent monitor helps. I find 120Hz and up smoother than the default 60. Frame should be black, not grey or white (helps perceived contrast). Calibrate it.

Workplace aside, 8 hour’s sleep and eating well (wholewheat pasta/rice/bread, veg, low sugar) may help mitigate the migraines.

To fix the twitter problem (not the headache problem), I straight-up got rid of my internet subscription at home. I still have it on my phone, though that’s limited to a small amount of gigabytes per month. I find that I’m less prone to long periods of getting distracted by the internet when I want to work. It has also changed the way that I interact with the internet. I’m more focused now on getting something done when I do have internet access (like at school or at a café), since I know that, once I go home, I won’t have access anymore.

Might want to consult your employer’s workplace safety people; they should have them. If you don’t want to do that, or if they’re no help, here’s a few tips.

This WikiHow article, with pictures, covers posture at a monitor; this may help with your problems. There’s lots more at OSHA.

Also, get some break reminder software; a few minutes break every 3/4s hour or so helps. (RSIguard is excellent but expensive, workrave on Windows is free but has some annoying graphics, Time Out on Macs has at least the advantage of cheapness.)

Laptops are inherently a problem here; they encourage poor posture. The only real answer to that problem is to limit use of laptops, which I fear is a council of perfection.

I find the constantly sitting aspect of my job really worrying. I think it has started to affected my posture, it is definitely reducing my fitness and leading to weight gain, and although i do a lot of exercise (kickboxing) that works to stave off most of its effects, as I get older and the length of time I’ve worked in a sitting job increases, the required amount and intensity of exericse to offset it is growing. I don’t know what to do about it and it is very depressing.

Regarding migraines, I used to get them when I was maybe 19 years old and a doctor taught me this one neat trick (ha!): when you sense the prodrome, take a water soluble aspirin. For me the prodrome was this kind of hole in my vision and feeling of slight disembodiment. If I took the water soluble aspirin as soon as I saw that hole starting, the migraine never arrived (though I still spent a few hours feeling weird). It was a remarkably cheap and effective strategy. However, my migraines (though definitely migraines) were at the mild end of the spectrum and seemed to be related to my age, since they stopped after just a couple of years (possibly after I started kickboxing?!) So it may be that the strategy doesn’t work at older ages/more severe migraines.

Window 10 has an inbuilt “nightmode” now after that last big update which seems to do the same thing as flux. Does not help me however (to sleap better after using my laptop for too long at night, that was my goal).

One technique to deal with avoidance behaviour in general is to limit ones time of the day asigned to the avoided work. During that time asigned short timeframe the options are either to do nothing at all or the work. During the rest of the day, working on the avoided work is forbidden. If possible one starts really low, maybe even just 1 hour and then moves slowly back to a full workload.

I don’t want to be that guy, but standing desk with laptop. Not only does it mean I move around more and takes tension off of my shoulders, which is good for avoiding headaches, it also radically cut down own on my time-wasting. Somehow when I am standing I am more focused- and appreciate it more when I flop down with the ipad to waste some quality time. I guess noodling on the internet isn’t as much fun when you have to stand to do it. I hasten to add that I don’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, walk on water, and all the other stuff standing desk evangelists claim. I just get more work done and don’t have such bad shoulders.

Oh, dear, I had so much to counsel until I heard the rest. I don’t know, except to cultivate an aesthetic and epistemological distaste for Twitter.

It keeps me off Twitter to have it remind me I didn’t know much of beauty and little of anything at all when I lived among strip malls in the ugliest suburbs of Los Angeles growing up. And Twitter is too close to that place for me to go back too often after I visited an ordinary decent place. I go back home to visit, sometimes Twitter, sometimes my family.

My eyes are not what they used to be, no doubt in part because of the years I’ve spent staring into computer monitors, so I got a Samsung Note 10.1 which has very high resolution — you can’t see the dots (or I can’t, anyway) which means my eyes are not going to get tired trying to focus on what is inherently blurry (a less high resolution screen). I notice, though, that people seem to watch television for hours without complaint, and that’s usually comparatively low-res. So I don’t know. Maybe we’re all just doomed.

Headaches: admitting the onset of old age and getting a separate pair of reading glasses, with some sort of magic coating to manage screen glare, has helped.

Twitter: not sure I can help, other than being an Awful Warning – don’t create multiple accounts, however amusing this might seem at the time…

Given that we’re all reading CT, rather than doing anything productive, this may not bee the right place to ask for help, unless you consider it like an AA meeting. At least I’ll be going back to doing actual work and not reading CT once I’ve finished my morning coffee.

The choice of monitor and position is important uf you’re going to be using it at lot. Try to find one that diesn’t strain your eyes ad much.

The twitter addiction is a different kind of problem…

(I do work and random web surfing on rwo different machines, partly for security/firewall reasons, but it also has the useful side effect of me not being tempted to e.g. read CT when I’m trying to get work done).

JQ@37: NB, the point about an addictive counter-response is good, but someone with bad back problems is likely not well-advised to go for long runs; long swims on the other hand…..

Well I’m not a doctor so will start with the obligatory you should see your own doctor (and probably physiotherapist/osteopath). Otherwise general health promotion advice (some of which others have already said but I’ll repeat for emphasis and apologies if you do all this already):

Make sure you get sufficient exercise – about an hour a day moderate, like walking (eg 10000 steps) and occasional bursts of vigorous (I’m not sure there are guidelines on that but maybe several times a week?)
If you drive a car regularly (eg commute by car) try to cut down – try to use ‘active transport’ (eg walking, cycling) as much as possible
Take frequent breaks (eg every hour or so) move around, stretch
Look away from the screen frequently
If you drink alcohol, follow guidelines (here it’s no more than two a day in general, but some are now starting to say no more than one a day, and no more than four in any one session) also try to have several alcohol free days per week (consecutively is good) and consider a break eg ‘dry July’
Also follow a healthy diet (I am in favour of the old five veg and two fruit per day rule though I think that’s been changed here now, and of course restrict sugar and junk food)
(I’m a vegetarian, but anyway many people eat too much meat, so think about reducing meat, particularly red meat, if that applies to you)
Drink enough water (it doesn’t have to be the eight glasses a day that was touted once, can’t remember if there’s a formal recommendation, but make sure you drink enough)
Of course get enough sleep

We’ve just moved into new offices with all the ergonomic stuff which includes sit-stand desks, monitors on long arms so you can move them to where it suits you, and chairs that you can lean right back and stretch on (sorry I don’t know what they’re called, but their back is flexible, not fixed) – I know not everyone has this stuff, but I think it’s becoming increasingly recognised that too much sitting is an OHS health hazard (particularly for women according to some research I’ve seen) so you can agitate for your employer to provide it

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head – I don’t get migraines so can’t say anything about that – anyway I guess that’s doctor territory. Just ensuring you get enough exercise is a really great thing though.

On social media I cannot help you – can you help me? :) but spending at least an hour a day walking or whatever will give you a break anyway

My opthalmologist says that we normally blink up to sixty times a minute, but only half as often when gazing at a screen. That makes our eyes drier. Eyedrops should help.

I find having a weekly internet sabbath is really helpful, and the benefits extend into the following week. It’s just a reminder that nothing online is as pressing or important or [insert your rationalization of choice here] as it seems. For me, at least, it just cuts down on that underlying buzz of anxiety that there’s something happening somewhere I could be engaging with. (As if the thing I’m not doing because I’m watching old Thundercats videos on YouTube isn’t engaging.)
For me, an actual recent memory of how nice it is to be unconnected helps me check myself when I’m tempted to click open a browser for no reason whatsoever. I always tell myself “it’s just for a minute,” but then it’s five minutes, then I stumble across an honestly interesting article that is in no way relevant to what I’d been doing.
I’m of the mind that you’re 100% right that there’s a “techno-capitalist superstructure that wants to get and keep us addicted,” but I don’t experience migraines, so this might or might not be helpful.
But. Yeah. Internet sabbath. Also what lots of other people said. Especially Flux, and limiting consecutive minutes in your chair. (I use my phone timer for that. Get up, get a drink of water, &c.)

John Quiggin observed An addictive response needs a counter in kind. A long run first thing in the morning is hard to start with, but once you’re hooked, you’re hooked.

I do the same with cycling, because I can choose to live about 30-50 minutes ride from work. It’s surprising how even in the worst weather “I could get the train instead but then I’d have to walk 5km from the station” means I ride almost regardless of weather :) If you can wake yourself up with a bit of exercise that should help. It also sets a mental boundary, when I work from home I find getting up, going for a ride, then coming back sets me into a “now I’m working” frame of mind.

But contra Joseph Brenner, I find having a smartphone very handy… however I am sufficiently cheap/paranoid/knowledgeable that I keep data and wifi turned off almost all the time. There are a lot of useful functions (calendars, calculators, note takers, all sorts of stuff). Annoyingly reading long form anything isn’t one of them, even on my 7″ phablet I struggled. I fear that trying to use a 10″ tablet as a phone would not work, to the point where I haven’t tried.

Still, I do often think that I think better w/ pen and paper than on the computer.

It’s too easy to delete stuff on the computer. Sketching stuff out by hand, you’re stuck with what you’ve written and you move on.

Me… normally I write dot points and expand, when I’m writing long-form; easy to shuffle around. But sometimes the whole thing just doesn’t gel, and then it’s time to break out the paper and scribble some notes and thoughts down, leave the filtering for later.

I actually do this for lots of “rough drafts” where I mean _really_ rough. But, the problems reoccur when it comes time to type them out, and I have the additional problem of trying to figure out what the hell I wrote down a lot of times. Still, I do often think that I think better w/ pen and paper than on the computer.

This is my life.

——

For the aches/pains thing, I tend to pace and mildly stretch every 45-50 minutes. It’s pretty basic but it helps, I find, esp. because I have extremely bad posture when I sit. (Also, smoke breaks, but not recommending those. Yet, they are bizarrely helpful.)

For the distraction/procrastination, the only thing that has ever worked in my life is working across from someone who I know and who is also working. It’s basically a form of guilt-tripping oneself.

Nuts, cheese, and chocolate reminded me of something… look up MAOI (mono-amine oxidase inhibitor) and “hypertensive episode”. You may or may not see some diagnostic connection.

The “flat design” craze for light grey text on acres of bright white background has been killing my own aging eyes. Dark themes are your friend, though Microsoft seems committed to removing your ability to customize your interface (Linux is looking ever more attractive). I’m currently using this Firefox extension: “Dark Background and Light Text”, as well as this Firefox dark theme: “Metal Lion Australis Tiger”. Yes, Mozilla is preparing to nuke all the add-ons. Installing Firefox ver52-ESR is a temporary solution.

Second the recommended larger monitor/fonts/dpi and custom prescription lenses for computing. Also, I vastly prefer a trackball (not the thumb-ball variety) to lessen muscle strain in the wrist and shoulder. Last, I haven’t tried it myself, but an LED strip to backlight your monitor (like a 1950’s TV light) is said to help with eyestrain.

Here’s a link to that study (really, news about the study) I was talking about:
The mere presence of your smartphone reduces brain power, study shows

You see, if you do have a problem with addictive behavior, advice of the form “you just need to use some self-control”

I wasn’t aware that that was what I was saying. I’m sorry for doing so, as that is not what I meant.

I was trying to point out that your statement that “just having your smart phone near by, even if it’s shut off makes you measurably stupider” seems unlikely. Do you have to know that your smartphone is nearby, for instance?

The report you linked to doesn’t say that, possibly because you’re summarised to the point where what meaning remains is misleading. They looked at a particular cognitively demanding task, not stupidity. Quote: ” participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in a pocket or bag.” … “The researchers found that participants who were the most dependent on their smartphones performed worse compared with their less-dependent peers, but only when they kept their smartphones on the desk or in their pocket or bag.”

Seems that it might well be true for Maria but not true for others, since she’s in the “smartphone dependent” group. I am too, but I very much doubt I am in the dependent group that they look at (for example, I find it difficult to navigate unfamiliar areas without a smartphone)

Search Angela Stanton on fb who does a couple of groups for ketogenic nutritional protocols for migraineurs. As for the eye strain part of it, I am wearing yellow lenses (sometimes polarized) to block blue light. I make a point of trying to make sure they are on at least an hour before my scheduled bed-time when I am doing screen time.