Be Kind to Yourself!

Care for your eyes, body, & mental health


I’m not sure this completely I keep it in because I believe we all need to keep an eye on the effects of what we doStrain is sneaky. You don’t know it’s there until medical attention is required.

Working on the computer for too long can cause headaches, blurred vision, or aching muscles and tendons that feel like rocks. In my case, my arm became so badly wrecked from overwork that I could barely grip a pencil. My arm was hooked up to an electrified acupuncture getup that zapped up my arm in alarming but effective ways. It worked, thank goodness, because surgery was the alternative.

I am not a doctor, nor am I trying to be one.

This article offers advice only, from my experience with the long-term effects of eye and arm strain. If you want or need medical care or want to know more, consult a physician. Thank you, and enjoy this article! Sonia

Do these 4 simple things to reduce strain:

  • Position frequently used tools close to where you work to minimize eye and hand movements, back and forth. Tools such as the Layers Panel in an Image Editor and a computer monitor being an arm’s length away.

  • Once your tools are where you want them, save your workspace in your image editor. When you know where your tools are, you don’t need to look all over the planet for what you need every 2 minutes.

  • Learn to use keyboard shortcuts. The non-mouse/stylus arm can do some work, too, instead of lying on your lap like a sleeping cat.

  • Use the 20-20-20 rule to prevent eye strain: every 20 minutes of screen time, look away at something that is 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

If you’re not thinking about preventing strain, you should be.

Once you really get into the flow of working on your images, which you’ll do a LOT of, your body will start to ache over time. When that happens, you will need medical attention.

Making little tweaks right now to how you set things up and work will reduce strain on you over time without you even thinking about it.