Hack Your Sleep Habits with f.lux

There is a lot of literature on the subject of color temperature and its effects on the human circadian rhythm and melatonin production.  Here's the summary:

"Many are familiar with the "rods and cones" that provide our visual capabilities, but it was only about 15 years ago that retinal ganglion cells containing melanopsin, which are sensitive to a narrow band of blue light in the 460-480nm range, were discovered, and their unique effect on sleep was investigated.

The experimental research suggests that an average person reading on a tablet for a couple hours before bed may find that their sleep is delayed by about an hour."

Another important thing to note is that human circadian rhythms evolved in a world where artificial lighting wasn't a thing except occasionally for a fire, which was a warm light.  Sunset and fire-light were signals that it would soon be time to sleep.  Daylight (which your screen emulates by default) is a cue for staying awake.  Your body does a whole awful lot to halt melatonin production when blasted with something it thinks is sunlight.

So yes, that ominous blue glow of the midnight hacker is actually as negative as it looks.  But, thankfully, there is a way to solve it.  Just get f.lux.  F.lux is a free, cross-platform utility that figures out when sunset is by checking your location and warms the color temperature.  For the first few weeks it'll seem remarkably orange, but after a little while you'll get used to it.  I can't think of a single tweak I recommend more highly to anyone who likes to use their computer late into the night.

Note 1: if you think you don't need to worry about getting enough sleep, think again.  Literally every study disagrees.  Type "sleep deprivation cognitive" or "sleep deprivation performance" into google scholar and you'll find study after study saying that you need to sleep if you want to have the best possible performance at whatever you do.

Note 2: if you have an iOS device, you can't get f.lux without jailbreaking.  That being said, I'll probably post a guide to doing so relatively soon, though it's not as if others haven't already done that.