Eye Strain In Front Computer Too Long

Do you often work in front of computer? Do you spend hours sitting, facing your computer to do work everyday? Do you love to browse the internet for hours until your parents/family call you for dinner? Do you chat a lot? Do you often find yourself browsing for hours already and you decide to stop after another 10 minutes but that 10-minute never come?

If you answer yes to ANY of the above questions, you may have experienced a simple eye strain before. However! If you answer YES TO ALL OF THE QUESTIONS ..
Nothing will happen, don't worry. I too, do all of the above.

Eye strain due to constantly looking at computer screen may be something often ignored nowadays. It is not a big problem at first: a quick effort by moving the eyeballs around or a quick rub with hands may solve it just nice. However a repetitive eye strain is proven to be something we cannot ignore anymore.

So how do we fight this eye strain?

Traditionally, as what some experts in this area suggest, is to do a 20-20-20 rule. What is this 20-20-20 rule? According from the emails I receive being forwarded here and there, Amit Argawal (who happens to be a professional blogger) receives eye-resting tips as follow:

To help you deal with this problem, the 20-20-20 rule suggest that after every 20 minutes, you should take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at objects that are 20 feet away from you.

Well of course you can do this 20-20-20 rule to reduce the eye-strain effect. The problem is, will you always remember to do the 20-second break?

This is where some simple tools may help you to remember. Here are 3 applications which can reduce your eye strain by automatically schedule a break for a specified interval.

1. EyeDefender
A small tool which I prefer personally. It is very small in size and has some relaxing method of eye-relaxing. One of them requires your eyeball to follow a white box moving on the corners of your black computer screen while blinking during the process. Only for Windows.

[ Page for EyeDefender screenshots ]

[ Download Page for EyeDefender ]

2. Workrave
Although the installer is bigger in size, it runs quite smooth. The difference is that unlike EyeDefender, Workrave does not blank your screen when it is a break time: it is like a command window. You may choose to use this instead if you are using Linux.

[ Page for Workrave screenshots ]

[ Download Page for Workrave ]

3. TimeOut
For Mac users, this tool can do the work for you.

[ Page for TimeOut screenshots ]

[ Download Page for TimeOut ]

I had installed and used EyeDefender for several days. However I decided to remove it not that because it was buggy or slowing my startups. It was because I found myself intolerable when something can just blank my screen when I was typing or researching something for a computer break.

Well of course I still need to do a 20-20-20 rule as suggested or maybe I need to try the Workrave instead. I have not had the chance to tried others though since I remove EyeDefender. So if you have your own methods for eye-relaxing or some other tools you personally favorite in, leave your comments for us to know.