Ask HN: How to take personal care when you are in front of screen for 16 hours?

- Get an external monitor if you can. Personally I can't use a laptop for an extended period of time because it really takes a toll on your body. I just use my laptop in clamshell mode with a large external monitor, and an external mechanical keyboard and mouse.

- Get up and walk around. I usually get up and stay up for 15-30 mins about once every two to three hours. Mid afternoon (the longest work stretch of my day) I get up, go down 12 flights of stairs and take a walk around a few blocks just to keep the blood moving.

- With regard to eyes use a dark background for everything. Bright light is what makes your eyes hurt. Alternatively make sure the difference between foreground and background isn't too great. A soft light behind your monitor can reduce the contrast between the blinding light coming out of it and the dark area behind. Also make sure to look away from the screen periodically. If there is a window nearby stand up every 15 mins or so, walk over to it, and look out at a distant object. This is good for both body and eyes.

Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, plyometrics, running, some powerlifting, and stretching/mobility work (all CrossFit stuff). Doing all this is preventative maintenance to sitting at a desk for hours at a time.

I do this six days a week, 2 hours a day starting at 6am. When I'm at the computer, because my body is strengthened and limber, I can sit a lot longer but I inherently like to move around a lot.

Also, having a good workstation is key. Proper height for chairs, monitor at eye level, elbows are slightly above parallel to the keyboard. Stand up stations are also awesome and cheap/easy to create.

I read all the answers and they're very good. I'd just add something very important: keep track of how many days you go without doing exercise, eating healthy etc. All this advice is great, but it's very easy to have a 'bad period' where you just don't realize you're going back to your old patterns. Being more specific: implement some remainder in front of you that shows your progress over time. E.g.: a piece of paper showing you the dates you exercised in green, and the ones you didn't in red. Make it your first priority to complete that piece of paper. You can go fancier with web apps or even fit-bands, but the idea is the same: track yourself everyday. And be aware of when you stop doing what you need to be doing.

Hey, I was feeling a lot of eye strain a few months ago while writing my dissertation. I went to an ophthalmologist, and he gave me a few tips that changed my life (no, serisouly):

- DO NOT have the monitor at eye's level as some people suggest. Our muscles relax when the eye is looking down. 45 degrees down is fine. See for yourself: Put your finger at eye's level and keep looking at it for as long as you can. Then drop it down to chest's level and see how much better it is.

- Get yourself a bigger monitor, in case you don't already have one, and stay further away from it. Also related to eye muscles strain: focusing up-close is really bad for you. Do this test: look at your finger really close to the eye, and then place it further away.

It puts a lot of strain on the eye's muscles to look up and focus up-close. Those were exactly my problems. Putting my chair a little bit higher and my monitors further back in my desk solved my problems.

edit: Make sure to use only your eyes to look down, and not your neck or back, otherwise you will replace one problem with another.

Having the top of the monitor at eye level allows you to look down at the entire screen (which is what I understood to mean having the monitor at eye level).