Gadgetory

if sitting in front of a computer all day is making your eyes burn your neck ache and your vision blurry you might have a common problem known as eye strain in medical terms it's called computer vision syndrome and today I'll give you five tips that will hopefully make it all go away sometimes a simple tweak to your monitor setup will do the trick so your monitor should be twenty to thirty inches away from your eyes if it's too far or too close adjust accordingly also the top of your monitor should be at eye level because you should be looking down at your work not up so if you need to adjust the height of your monitor up or down if you need extra height you can use risers like these or hardcover books if you have them around there is a chance your eye strain is caused by too much artificial or natural light so if you can turn off any harsh fluorescent lights instead use a floor lamp or a desk lamp and position it so that it's giving off indirect light on either side of your computer one simple way to offset long hours at the computer is to use the 20-20-20 rule every 20 minutes you find an object 20 feet away and stare at it for 20 seconds doing so will exercise your eyes plus it'll give you a little relief from staring at a bright white screen all day if you need reminders to take these breaks consider a program like break taker for PC or timeout for Mac in an office or even at home you might have a lot of light around your desk natural light coming from a window and worst of all the backlight of your monitor all of these things are really harsh on your eyes and cause fatigue so one solution is Gunnar's glasses they're tinted yellow to offset the cool blue light that your monitor produces in my experience they've been a big help but they do take some getting used to and you've got to look like this if your keyboard is over here and you're reading materials are over there and your computer screen is up here you're forcing your eyes to constantly readjust to those various distances which causes eye fatigue and headaches and so on and so forth instead your keyboard should be directly in front of your computer screen and your reading materials should be adjacent to them an easy way to do this is to use something called a copy holder which holds your papers in place while you type with all these tips in place hopefully you'll see a lot less stress on your eyes but if you're still suffering it's just getting an eye exam you might find that all you need is a pair of reading glasses if you have any tips or questions hit me up on Twitter and follow CNET how-to for more guides like this for cnet.com I'm Sharon Vaknin