The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

It is the light that makes the difference

When it is time to go to bed you want to sleep well. You can increase your chances of a rest­ful night by chang­ing the set­tings for the com­put­er screen. I will­ing­ly admit that when it comes to hor­mones and body func­tions, I am only a lay­man, but stud­ies such as Figueiro et al:s ​”The impact of light from com­put­er mon­i­tors on mela­tonin lev­els in col­lege stu­dents.” indi­cates that the blue light with short wave-length that com­put­er screens nor­mal­ly emit, sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreas­es the secre­tion of mela­tonin, which is the hor­mone that makes us tired.

This is why devel­op­ers of oper­at­ing sys­tems have cre­at­ed func­tions that reduce the blue light dur­ing the evening so that look­ing at a screen close to bed­time will not affect the qual­i­ty of our sleep as much. For the user, it looks as if the screen is turn­ing more yel­low when the sun has set, and it becomes almost orange lat­er in the evening.

Do this

If you have not yet tried one of these light-manip­u­lat­ing tools and want to see what dif­fer­ence they could make for your sleep, turn them on and try them for a cou­ple of weeks.

• In Win­dows, the func­tion is called Night light, and you turn it on in the dis­play set­tings in Win­dows.
• In Mac’s OS X the func­tion is called Night Shift and is acti­vat­ed in the Dis­play sec­tion of the Sys­tem pref­er­ences.

When you have turned them on, they run by them­selves and reg­u­late the light accord­ing to when the sun ris­es and sets, or accord­ing to what oth­er pref­er­ences you set it to.

Being tired when it is appropriate

If you adjust the light on your com­put­er screen so that it does not reduce your mela­tonin-lev­els as much when you are work­ing in the evenings, you will sleep bet­ter — if you are to trust the study I referred to. An unplanned work­ing ses­sion just before bed­time and the fact that the day did not turn out as you had planned, will not trou­ble you as much. It makes you feel a lit­tle bet­ter, doesn’t it?

What is your way?

What is your expe­ri­ence of adjust­ing the screen light? Is it a ​“yey” och ​“ney” for you? Let me know in an email to me!

(By the way, beware of office sleep overs!)