Unless you practice really excellent blur horizon habits for *all* of your close-up, unless you rarely if ever use a smartphone more than a few minutes closer than your blur horizon – you probably have not-ideal residual ciliary spasm.

Here’s something to try out (if you have good active focus practice and aren’t a newbie): Increase your close-up distance to where there’s really almost too much blur to read text. Make sure that’s the distance, no cheating. (this won’t work well if you’re doing graphic design or any work besides reading text – recall is key here)

Now stay at that super challenging distance and really be ready to struggle reading text. Give it at least 20-30 minutes, while reading, while fighting all that blur. Nudge a bit closer from time to time if need be. No whining, just stick with it.

Notice how towards the end of the 20-30 minutes text starts getting clearer. Aha!

There’s your bad smartphone habits sabotaging your 20/20 gains. All it takes is 1-2 hours a day of sitting on the couch or laying in bed watching Youtube at unchecked close distance for a week or two, to crunch your actual maximum centimeter distance. Like being on a diet and not counting snacks, the smartphone time!

Note: Don’t try this longer than 45 minutes.  If nothing changes, don’t force it – and this isn’t a regular habit if it produces no changes – only do this regularly if you get ciliary spasm (and address smartphone use ideally).  Remember that in general too much stimulus just becomes unnecessary strain.