Every day at around three in the afternoon my eyes would start burning and I would blame the office lighting, my allergies, the screen, everything except the thing that was actually causing it.

The real culprit was embarrassingly simple: I had stopped blinking.

The blink thing is real

When you focus on a screen, your blink rate drops to about a third of normal. Blinking is what spreads a fresh layer of tears over your eyes, so fewer blinks means your eyes dry out and start to sting.

• Notice how rarely you blink while reading this
• Try the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds
• Make a habit of doing a slow, full blink a few times an hour

The 20-20-20 rule does double duty. It forces you to blink and it gives your eye muscles a break from staring at one distance all day.

The cheap fix that worked for me

Artificial tears, the plain lubricating drops, fixed ninety percent of my problem for a few dollars. Get the preservative-free single-use ones if you use them more than a couple times a day, and skip the redness-remover drops which can make dryness worse over time.

Also check your screen position. Your screen should be slightly below eye level so you look down at it. When you look up, your eyes open wider and dry out faster. Lowering my monitor a couple inches made a bigger difference than I expected.