For all but the last six months of my life, I’ve taken pride in my above-average vision. I’ve always been grateful to experience life in ever-so-slightly higher resolution than most people get to enjoy. Recently, though – about 6 months into my latest (fairly intensive) desk job, I hit an unfamiliar obstacle: text on my computer screen had a bit of a halo around it, like the letters were both sharp and blurry at the same time.

A trip to the ophthalmologist shed light on the problem: while my left eye was still good as new, my right eye’s vision had degraded to a prescription of -0.75. Not terrible compared to many, but I was, in fact, seeing text both clearly and unclearly at once. This led to headaches and eye strain as my eyes struggled with the impossible task of bringing things fully into focus.

I’m not the only one whose eyesight is coming undone, as I confirmed when I read this enlightening article from the Washington Post. More than 40% of the U.S. population aged 12-54 is nearsighted (up from 25% in the 1970s), and this impairment is not evenly distributed across the population; if you’re a young farmer or construction worker, you’re about half as likely to wear glasses as a young lawyer, educator, engineer or business manager. While correlation doesn’t imply causation, I’m willing to look at this data, sprinkle in my own experience, and then jump to the conclusion that tiny text is to blame.

What can we do about it?

Pivoting to a career in construction might honestly be the best way to preserve what’s left of my eyesight. But since sitting at a desk has also left me with a bad back (or at least, an unreliable one), that ship has sailed. Given that I’ll be computer-bound for the foreseeable future, I’ve got to implement some protocols to help mitigate the damage that 10+ hours of screen time is inflicting on my eyesight.

Take a visual break every 20 minutes – if your work culture is anything like mine, taking a break every 20 minutes is going to sound absurd. But all you really need to do here is spend 20-30 seconds focusing on a series of objects at a variety of distances. The lenses in your eyes are controlled by muscles that focus them, and staring at a screen that’s always the same distance away would be like going to the gym and only ever doing one exercise, every day; pretty soon, you’ll be deficient at doing everything other than that exercise.

Larger text, further away – I’m not 100% sure that it’s any better to be staring constantly at something 3 feet away than 2 feet away, but it feels like it can’t hurt to increase your text size (and perhaps even screen size) so that everything’s not quite so close. This can also reduce the temptation to lean in, steering clear of the dreaded and painful nerd neck.

Increase your resolution – this one is based purely on my own anecdotal experience, but it sure seems like my eyes strain more to look at the cheaper monitors in my company office than when I’m looking at my own badass LG monitor or my MacBook Pro Retina Display. It feels like my eyes are working hard to make the text not blurry, when the text really is blurry.

Dark mode!! I don’t know whether this tip helps to preserve your eyesight long-term or not, but it has some other benefits and I don’t know when my next article about eyesight will be, so here it is. Using dark mode (dark background with light text) in as many applications as possible will reduce the amount of artificial light bombarding your eyes, helping to preserve your circadian rhythm and enhance your sleep, especially if you work late.

As an added benefit, the reduction in white light emitted from your screen will help you to appear less pale on Zoom calls. Given how little I can make it out to see the sun these days, I need all the help I can get.