I work from home, doing a job that requires staring at a screen for the better part of eight hours per weekday. Outside of work, most of my hobbies also involve looking at a screen. That's a lot screen time, and it's been taking its toll on me. I've been getting eye strain and headaches and it's been slowly getting worse as I get older.
There are a number of things I'm doing to try and address this, but the most obvious to me is just taking a break from looking at screens. I decided next time I get a day off and I don't have any other plans or obligations, I will try to go a full 24 hours without looking at a screen. That day finally arrived this weekend.
I didn't want to go super extreme on this, like go out into the woods and avoid all technology or something. So, here's the rules I came up with:
So I slept in a little, got up around 10:00 am. Went through my normal routine, got a little extra cleaning done which was nice. Then I sat on the couch to do some reading. I recently got the new 2024 D&D Dungeon Master's Guide and haven't had a chance to really look at it, so I started there. I fell asleep. Several times. That's not totally unusual for a middle aged person laying around on a lazy Sunday, but I definitely felt the difference without some kind of Youtube video or something playing in the background like I normally have. It felt pretty good, honestly.
After a few hours and grabbing some lunch, I decided to finally get around to changing strings on my guitar. I play guitar for at least a few minutes every day, but I never feel like I have to time or energy to do maintenance. So I changed the strings, cleaned it up a bit, and got some extended practice time in. Once again, it was nice. I felt like I had accomplished something. I actually felt quite refreshed.
Those were the main non-screen activities I had planned for the day, and once I was done it was... only 5:00 pm. I could have gone back to reading more of the DMG or find something else to do. But I started thinking of all the other things I WANTED to do: I need to finish planning the last part of my D&D campaign. I need to plan the year end schedule for The GLORIO Blog and start working on my portion of that. I have another post I'm writing about the history of gacha games that I want to finish. I want to watch the latest episode of Thunderbolt Fantasy. I want to finish Metaphor: ReFantazio (or maybe get it over with would be more accurate). All of those things require looking at a screen.
After some time thinking about it, I decided to open my laptop and start drafting this post before the 24 hours were over. To answer the question, is it possible to go 24 hours without looking at a screen, of course the answer is yes. I could force myself to do that, but why? I think I already learned what I needed to learn from this exercise. I definitely need to take more breaks like this. Maybe I will designate every Sunday morning as "screen-free time" moving forward. But like many things in life, balance is important. That's easy to say, but it's something we often have to remind ourselves.