What's the purpose?
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Just installed this about 4 hours ago and was pretty excited until I realized I'm not sure what this is supposed to do.
The front page says: "You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better [...]"
What if I want to be active and productive day and night? Is it actually preventing eye strain so I can work longer? It doesn't say that on the front page... Or would the blue light I'm dimming away actually have helped keep me productive and awake? Am I hurting my own purpose here?
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The main purpose is to help make it easier to avoid blue light in the critical hours before going to sleep. Blue light disrupts melatonin production. Another way to put that is, blue light is "alerting". It delays melatonin production. It causes the body to think it's morning or daytime.
Let's say that f.lux didn't exist. You could adjust all of your lighting at night to avoid blue light entirely, but as soon as you use your computer, you're being blasted by blue light which would totally make all of your efforts to avoid blue light go to waste. So f.lux helps with that by enabling you to significantly reduce the amount of blue light that is being emitted by your computer.
Of course, other uses can involve reducing eyestrain and discomfort. The main (and original) purpose though is to avoid blue light so that you don't disrupt or delay melatonin production which, in turn, helps you avoid disrupting your circadian rhythm.
So, f.lux by itself doesn't make you sleep better.
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@gambagus I like to think that f.lux also helps you be much more aware about lighting and it's effects on sleep, that's my favorite part!
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@gambagus we hope to learn a lot more about all of these questions too.
I think there is a balance for each person somewhere that allows productive focus when you need it but that doesn't also reprogram your circadian rhythm two time zones away (what one night of iPad use can do right now, more at: https://justgetflux.com/news/2014/12/22/study.html).
Want to help us figure it out? Try different settings of f.lux, keep notes, see what works for you. Our best measurements and models that include the most recent sleep science are posted at: https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/ and from here on out we can only learn more.
@lorna
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@lorna It may need to be a smidgen higher than 4000K because I made a strange error on a homework assignment. The answer was around 1000 or something like that and I put about seven 0s to it! When I saw the error in an email I was just shocked!
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@TwoCables said:
Of course, other uses can involve reducing eyestrain and discomfort.
How exactly? Does reducing/eliminating blue light have this effect?
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Thanks for the answers.
I'll reiterate though: My goal is to prevent strain, and be as productive, efficient and effective as possible. I was wondering if the lack of blue light would improve my concentration (by whatever mean, be it lack of distracting eye strain, or neurochemical effects), or make me sleepier and worsen it. Or if it has nothing to do with it.
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@lorna said:
I think there is a balance for each person somewhere that allows productive focus when you need it [...]
That implies that decreasing the blue light is indeed suspected to decrease productive focus, am I inferring correctly?
(what one night of iPad use can do right now, more at: https://justgetflux.com/news/2014/12/22/study.html).
On the other side, that link also suggests your post-sleep waking hours might be more productive, regardless of the effect the lack of blue light had on the actual nocturnal waking hours.
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Try different settings of f.lux, keep notes, see what works for you.
Gosh, I would, but my biggest problem with studies on psychology is the subjectiveness of the reports and the infinite amounts of factors responsible.
I awaken some days feeling like my body is a brick and can spend the first few hours yawning to the point that tears roll down my cheek, other days I'll feel fit and spring right out of bed. This is pre-f.lux, I'm afraid my reports would have no value as to finding a trustworthy correlation let alone causation between the settings and my sleep & waking state.
I want to get into the field professionally, but that's my biggest concern as to my ability/motivation to build my life entire life around psychology/psychiatry.
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@gambagus I have a longer answer I'd like to write for you but I'm short on time right now!
Poor quality and short duration of sleep will destroy your focus much faster than enriched blue light will help it.
I totally agree you on the subjectivity problem. An N of 1 study isn't great idea for research, but there are lots of reasons to figure out what works for you based on your own data. Light affects the body in incredibly custom ways. The best sleep research often has a small number of study participants because it's quite expensive and complex to isolate all those normal factors (age, chronotype, light exposure, diet, etc.).
There are been studies that indicate that blue-enriched light can help focus, so it's probably a fine thing for most people to use at a time of day when it's not going to interfere with your sleep. (f.lux doesn't set your screen to orange during your waking daytime for many reasons.)
And what works for you might not work for someone else, so that's why keeping objective notes, even if they're not truly scientific, could be worth it. Who knows what you might discover, and if it only helps you, that would still be well worth it for you. Having a sleep study done would be a good idea too to rule out any physiological causes (like obstructive sleep apnea).
Some notes on cognitive effects of sleep deprivation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/
Some research about time of eating (which is another variable that has a huge affect on all this) http://www.wsj.com/articles/researchers-say-when-you-eat-each-day-may-be-crucial-to-weight-loss-1422901628
And some thoughts on walking and how it helps creativity http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/walking-vs-sitting-042414.html
Hope this helps - I am also personally very interested to learn how to maximize productive time and creativity, so I think about how to answer this question a lot.
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Love this thread. Couple more ideas:
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Sleep helps people remember things and solve problems, so "productivity" is not just about the moment to moment. It's good to think about your productivity over 24 hours or 48 hours, and not 2. You can solve problems while you sleep.
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If you're mostly a night owl who's had the most productive hours late at night, it is extremely uncomfortable to "reorganize" your day to be earlier. The idea that you could be productive several hours earlier might be pretty strange.
In the ideal world, people would have fantastic tools for understanding their circadian timing and how to optimize the day for what they want to do.
What seems pretty important for productivity and "feeling good" is that people keep a more regular schedule day to day, and the trouble with really bright light at night is that it seems to make people have an irregular schedule. So one big idea with f.lux is that we give you a way to automate some of the light/dark timing this way.
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@gambagus said:
@TwoCables said:
Of course, other uses can involve reducing eyestrain and discomfort.
How exactly? Does reducing/eliminating blue light have this effect?
Oh yes. I think at night, the highest color temp the eyes really want to see is near 4100K (but probably lower.) This is the color temperature of moonlight, which is just light from the sun reflected from the moon. I would guess this is the whitest light we would naturally ever see at night (excluding lightning, which seems very bluish, maybe 8000K in color tone).
What I mean is, in the daytime, a 100 watt bulb looks quite yellow, but around 9 PM, you crank that thing all the way to the brightest setting, and it's VERY crisp white., not much yellow to be seen there. turn down light again
Our eyes seem to strongly prefer warmer colored light at night, and I am sure that it's much nicer for my eyes, and relaxation.
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@herf said:
Love this thread. Couple more ideas:
- Sleep helps people remember things and solve problems, so "productivity" is not just about the moment to moment. It's good to think about your productivity over 24 hours or 48 hours, and not 2. You can solve problems while you sleep.
What's that?!
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@timpster What? No one would ever like seeing a sunny day if that were true...
@lorna
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@timpster said:
@herf said:
Love this thread. Couple more ideas:
- Sleep helps people remember things and solve problems, so "productivity" is not just about the moment to moment. It's good to think about your productivity over 24 hours or 48 hours, and not 2. You can solve problems while you sleep.
What's that?!
Think back to how people say things like, "I'll sleep on it and get back to you". There's a huge amount of truth to it. With proper sleep, the brain is given the ability to process a huge amount of information.
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@gambagus said:
What if I want to be active and productive day and night?
Then that's a problem. Because you can't.
Your body (and mind) needs rest, and time to repair itself, and there's no way around it. You can pump yourself up with coffee, cigarettes, and blue light late at night, to keep yourself awake, sharpen your thinking, and get more work done. But it's not sustainable, and it will sooner and/or later catch up to you.
After sunset, the body starts to produce melatonin, and continues for around twelve hours. One effect of melatonin is that it makes you feel more relaxed and sleepy. But it's also very important for many other processes of protection and repair. It helps process cholesterol, protects your cells' DNA, keeps your body young by fighting oxidative stress and inflammation, and most likely helps fight cancer. So it's very important for short-term and long-term health.
Bright blue light at night can completely stop melatonin production, so instead of twelve hours, your body only has access to it for maybe seven.
Is whatever you're working on late at night, important enough to seriously risk your health over? And are you sure that plan really works anyway? My experience is that you shouldn't expect more than about six hours of really productive work in a day. Beyond that, you push yourself into being exhausted, and the next day it's that much harder to do anything well. You end up with that on-the-treadmill feeling, and your work suffers. The research shows that people who regularly work sixty hours a week accomplish less than if they worked under fifty hours. That's accomplish in total, not per hour.
F.lux helps you have a more natural and healthy lifestyle. What you're asking for doesn't fit in well with that. The tradeoff between the demands and stress of work, and your own personal health, is something everyone has to decide about. It can be difficult when there's a big project deadline this week - and maybe every week - that seems more important than not getting cancer twenty years from now. Believe me, it's not. When the sun goes down, your body will tell you it's time to stop working. You should probably listen to it.
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@lorna said:
@timpster What? No one would ever like seeing a sunny day if that were true...
No, I detailed at night, in the daytime, I want regular light! But at night, it's incredibly relaxing to not have bright white light.
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@timpster said:
@lorna said:
@timpster What? No one would ever like seeing a sunny day if that were true...
No, I detailed at night, in the daytime, I want regular light! But at night, it's incredibly relaxing to not have bright white light.
I have a different way to say the same thing:
It's incredibly relaxing to not have bright white light when I have been awake for a long time (like say 18 hours).
The reason why I put it this way is, I don't always sleep at night. I find that even I've been awake for 18+ hours by the time noon comes around and it's a clear sunny day, I notice that I prefer lower brightness levels and lower levels of blue light too.
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@TwoCables Woah that's really interesting!
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@timpster said:
@TwoCables Woah that's really interesting!
It is, actually. If I maintain my exposure to bright light, then it's not really noticeable (except for the possibility of my eyes watering). As soon as I spend like say 30 minutes or more in darker light, brighter light becomes uncomfortable for me.
What really happens is, it takes my eyes longer to adjust to bright light when I've been awake for a long time (that is, if I go from a semi-dark room to a bright one), and I find that I feel better when I reduce the brightness in the brighter room.
I experimented with this once in my bathroom with my dimmer (I have three 75W 20,000 Aero-Tech bulbs in there). I went in there and turned the dimmer all the way up as I always do, but I found it to be uncomfortable. So instead of using the bathroom as planned, I found myself curiously dimming the light to a more comfortable level and then playing with the brightness and learning a lot in just a few seconds of time. lol I've been hyper-aware of it ever since, and it's the same result every time.
I think this comes from a natural production of melatonin, but I'm not sure yet. So I think the body begins producing melatonin if you've been awake for a long time and the light is dark enough, but not if you're well-rested and have only been awake for a few hours. I mean, think back: have you ever gone from a dark room to a bright room when you're well-rested and have only been awake for a few hours? It's no big deal. Do that when you've been awake for like 18+ hours, and your body is like, "No! I don't want bright light right now. Sigh." You can force yourself to get used to it and then you'll be fine, but it's not as easy as adjusting when you're not tired yet.
