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Comment by swsieber | Hacker News Reader

Get rid of screen time for 3 hours before bed.

Also, I highly recommend the book "Why we sleep"

Edit: you can also experiment woth wearing socks (by changing limb temperature you influence blood flow and heat dissappation

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THREE hours? What the heck do you do for that nearly 20% of your waking life?

I guess you buy a lot of books, or visit the library a lot. I personally like reading but not so much that I want to do it for three hours every flipping night.

I honestly thought this comment was joking at first! In fact I'm still not certain... is it really so difficult to imagine doing something other than stare at a screen for 100% of your waking life? What do you think people did for the entirety of human history? You could be writing, or drawing, or playing an instrument, or listening to music, or baking cookies, or taking a stroll, or playing darts, or building a model rocket, or literally any activity ever.

I don't mean to condescend, but man.

The concern is not the act of reading, but rather the additional exposure to light suppressing melatonin production.

Melatonin plays an important role in the sleep/wake cycle.

Avoiding unnecessary light for a period of 3 hours prior to sleep gives the body a chance to run it's shutdown scripts by producing enough melatonin, etc.

https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/melatonin-insulin-re...

Would putting all monitors in warm/night mode be sufficient?

Not op but I really enjoy my famous midnight walks. Walking also let's your body dump excess energy and so maybe you could get away with 1-1.5 hours only. Works well enough for me.

I'll take the opposite approach:

What does your life look like if you can't spend 3 hours away from a screen?

There's a whole world of opportunity out there.

I know it's not the same but for those that won't do this (for such a long period) at least activate/install some kind of night mode. It automatically adjusts the warmth of your screen color depending on time/daylight.

In the evening (or early morning) it will transition the colors to a warmer (red) tone. This helped me a lot. I really tire easier while sitting in front of the screen.

E.g. Gnome has this out of the box. It's called "night light".

Socks is one of the surprisingly good suggestions

Socks on or off?

Was there not a news just a few days ago about the research finding that screen time has no effect?

Maybe? There's been lots of research saying it does though, and I don't think I'd regret a decision to have less screen time before bed.

You might be thinking about the article about screen time and children, developmentally.

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