The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
Was having pretty insane eye strain issues that bled into a sort of chronic fatigue situated in my head that made me want to do nothing but lie down after my WFH programming job was done for the day. All post-work hobbies and even weekend hobbies were kind of a drag because I had this head thing going on. Tried all kinds of things like keeping the night filter on my work computer at all times, which maybe helped a little. Was worried I might have to get into another line of work.
Then I serendipitously discovered that of all the screens I own, precisely one of them uses pulse width modulation for dimming, and that's my iPhone 13 Mini. Years ago I had some problems with a PWM device and ended up getting rid of it. Was very surprised to see it on an iPhone. Last week I resolved to not ever look at my phone except for necessities like texting (and I don't hold long text conversations). So basically barely ever looking at my phone.
After a week the issue is almost completely resolved. It's ridiculous how well that worked.
So far I have no plans to get a new phone either because I kind of like being forced to look at my phone less. Win/win.
Reddit has some info on this here in case anybody else is dealing with something similar: https://old.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/
In my experience, eye strain issues are massively helped by short breaks scattered through out the day. Is it possible that you were filling the natural breaks in work by looking at your phone? If so, maybe it’s not about PWM, it’s about the fact that not having a phone means you’re not staring at screens 100% of the day.
Somewhat possible, definitely true for when I go out but when I'm at home (which is most of the time) I am extremely good at just pulling out the laptop when I get the impulse, even started taking the laptop into the bathroom with me with a tiny table to set it on.
Would agree there is definitely less overall screen time than before.
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I regularly code PWM drivers to control LED brightness at work and have never ever heard of this before. Is there some proposed mechanism that this creates the headaches in some people?
No idea, I just know I have a personal 100% n=2 now of removing PWM from my life totally fixing eye strain issues.
The concept is also widespread enough that monitor manufacturers use phrases like "flicker free" or "flicker safe" to advertise that they don't use PWM.
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