let's be clear about a couple of things. one: our vision is designed by natural evolution, and staring continuously at objects only 0.5 to 1 metre away is not part of nature's remit. two: our vision *does not* deteriorate with age, it deteriorates with *misuse* or more specifically *lack* of use: more specifically *lack of training*. eyes have *muscles*. fail to train those muscles and guess what happens?
there is a guy who decided he did not want to be enlisted in the vietnam draft, so two weeks prior to the eye exam he borrowed some glasses from a friend who had terrible vision. the deterioration in his vision as a result was so poor that he failed the eye exam, and so was ineligible for the draft.
now, afterwards, he reasoned that if it took only two weeks to turn his vision so disastrously badly wrong, it would, logically, be perfectly reasonable to attempt some eye exercises to get his formerly perfect vision back. the result: after some experimentation with some exercises, he got his perfect vision back.
now aged over 70 years old this person - who has written a book about the exercises that keep your eyes healthy - has twenty FORTY vision.
why am i mentioning this?
because aged 10 i was given prescription glasses. i had discovered computers a few years beforehand and had begun to spend significant hours in front of computers. every few years, as required and advised, i returned to the opticians. my eyes - EVERY TIME I RETURNED - were described to be "worse than before".
so aged 10 i had something like - 0.5 diopters, but by aged 36 i had -4.0 in one eye, -3.5 in the other and an astigmatism on top of that of -1. i spent $USD 1,000 on two pairs of glasses: one was +1 diopters less than the other. driving to holland, in the dark, i wore the "distance" glasses for 15 minutes and got such a massive headache from them that i had to wear the "reading" glasses.
so that was 2005. i realised that, after being told by opticians at the time "oh, people who are short-sighted are used to seeing perfectly at long distance so we give them an extra -0.25 just to help", that the problem was that i was being given glasses each and every single time that were too strong, but not only that, that i was having my vision "corrected" to distance, was then looking at objects only 0.5 to 1.0 metres away and my eyes were AUTOMATICALLY ADJUSTING.
at some point i then made the stupid mistake of getting a 24in iMac. huge wide screen, i thought it was fantastic. except that over the next three years using it, because i was sitting (unavoidably) close to it, my eyes trained themselves to deal with the wide angle... by going *prism*.
now when i look rapidly to the left or right at any object a distance further away than 2 metres, i CANNOT FOCUS ON IT. i see double for a good couple of seconds. in the dark, lights over two metres away i cannot bring into focus at all. however if the object is only 0.5 to 1 metre away, i am able to *really rapidly* flick my eyes backwards and forwards, focussing successfully within fractions of a second, absorbing the information on-screen.
in other words, guess what? my eyes *keep adjusting* to the conditions that i put them through.
now i have stopped getting prescription glasses entirely: i am absolutely fed up with the ignorant optician industry screwing up my vision. if i go to an optician, they think they know better and they damn well don't. they tell you that your eyes deteriorate with age, but that is absolute rubbish: the muscles around your eyes are just like any other muscle: they need *exercise*.
so that's what this old guy advocates: eye exercise. several times a day, stop what you are doing and look in the distance for 8 to 10 minutes. if you want to get rid of short-sightedness, pick two objects, one just at the edge of your "blurry" vision and one just inside it. look at the first, look at the second, look at the first, look at the second - focus on each as you do so. then, move the two objects (your thumbs will do) ever so slightly further away. repeat the exercise. very quickly you will get a *CONSCIOUS* feel for what it takes for your eye muscles to "focus" in the distance and, importantly, you are *exercising* those muscles, making them stronger. those muscles will become more capable, and you *will* be able to control them, just like any other muscle. i've done this successfully: it took a couple of weeks, and i had improved vision.
now i've also taken up tennis, and i go every day for around 20 minutes or more, even just to hit a ball against a wall. it's enough to teach me the importance of looking after my eyes, as i don't like seeing two balls coming towards me, because i can't hit either of them.
so, to our anonymous writer, i tell you this: DO NOT get progressive glasses, for goodness sake. i assume you are already taking breaks (to look after your wrists): please when you get up, go outside and look in the distance. if you don't want to walk, sit out on the porch or at the window, and look down the street if you don't have a garden. get a smaller higher-resolution screen: i now have a macbook pro (which i instantly destroyed the proprietary spyware-ridden OS on and replaced it with debian), and it has a 13in 2560x1900 LCD. i run the standard xterm font (around 9pt) and it is doing my eyes a hell of a lot of good, forcing them to focus *clearly*. i make my eye muscles *work*. i now look at other screens and i notice all the faults! in fact this only took 4 hours. and, importantly, with the screen width being smaller i am not forcing my eyes to different focal lengths quite as badly as that 24in widescreen.
if you absolutely must use 2 or more screens, *please* consider getting 1280x1024 (4:3 aspect ratio) or 1600x1200 or whatever, or if you do lots of programming run the 16:9 screens at 9:16 (sideways) - GNU/Linux OSes can do this perfectly well. make the screens form an arc rather than a straight line: no matter where you sit they should be directly head-on.
the basic critical point of all this: please *exercise* your eyes. don't trust any optician that is ignorant of this simple fact. you know you need to give all your *other* muscles a work-out rather than sitting there in a chair all day: why would those in your eyes be any different? and if you don't do that, then is it any surprise that the lenses in your eyes become "stiff" as well?