So lots of people are working from home now, many are struggling with boundaries and forgetting that working from home doesn’t mean working all the hours. Or perhaps you’re like me, always with new ideas for projects you want to be working on, and the only time to do this is after hours, when the family are in bed.

Whatever your reason for working late, staring at a screen until bedtime, it can cause havoc with your sleep.  The problem, in a nutshell…

During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun.

That’s right, at night time, you shouldn’t look at the sun.  That makes sense, right?

So what’s the solution?

[The thing I really like] makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

(I even like it enough to leave the American spelling of “color” in that quote, even though it hurts a little.)

f.lux – this is the magic.  That tiny link will change your life.

Phones, such as the iphone, come with this kind of thing baked in these days, or there are a myriad of apps to do similar, usually called “blue light filters”.  However, this software goes to a whole other level, gently warming the colour based on the sunrise and sunset times in my configured geolocation.  It’s so subtle you’ll barely notice it happening, but you’ll be so glad that it does.

Another little feature that I’m ambivalent about is the “Backwards Alarm Clock” – this gives me little notifications through the evening, things like “8 hours until you wake up”, “7 hours until you wake up”, etc..  This is linked to the “earliest wake time” you can see above, and reminds me that tomorrow is another day.

Once again, get f.lux!