Have you experienced that working late night in front of your computer screen often results you not feeling sleepy at all. You may get the same unsleepy feeling when you play computer games till late into the night. This is because the bright daylight coming from your computer screen disrupts the circadian rhythm of your body. As the natural light dims down in the evening and it gradually becomes dark, our body gets ready to fall asleep. But in modern lifestyle, we have bright daylight directed at us all the time – making our brain feel confused and not letting us fall asleep naturally. If you have to work till late night on your computer, you can use the free F.lux software which automatically adjusts the brightness and color of your computer screen according to the time of the day. This helps our bodies stick to the natural circadian rhythm and helps you get better sleep.
F.lux is free and works cross-platform in Windows, Mac and Linux alike. In Windows, it installs a notification area icon from where you can adjust its various settings. The F.lux software automatically detects your geographical location from your IP address and finds out the time and sunlight settings for you. But you can also manually change the location if you want. To change the location, right-click on the notification area icon and choose Change Location. Then you can enter either the ZIP code (if you live in the US) or the latitude and longitude.
You can manually adjust the color and lighting for daytime and night time. You can choose from daylight, halogen or fluorescent lights. At daytime it is best to choose the daylight. At night you should choose the fluorescent if you often stay inside during night. If you stay often outside usually at night and your body is tuned to the halogen light then pick halogen. You can also choose the transition time between light modes for day and night – slow or fast.
If you are a graphics designer or just like to work on color sensitive tasks, then you can disable F.lux temporarily for one hour. To disable F.lux temporarily right-click on the notification area icon and choose Disable for one hour. F.lux would automatically turn on after one hour or you can toggle it on using the same context menu.
F.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you are in, all the time. When the Sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again. So if you feel that your sleep cycles are being disrupted because of your late night work, then give F.lux a try and hopefully you would get sleep naturally in no time.
You can download the free F.lux software from https://justgetflux.com/.