Looking off to the distance outside

[u/HollerBastion]

How long are you supposed to look off to the farthest distance and do you have to be still/stay in one spot or is long distance viewing while walking ok?

[u/glowcubr]

I usually walk around for 15-20 minutes at a time and look at things at far and medium distances.

I think a good rule of thumb is to try to walk around until your vision becomes noticeably clearer (don't expect it to suddenly jump to perfect, but at least for me, after a while, I start thinking "ah, my eyes are clearer now! Now I can head back inside and get to work again")

(See my writeup for more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/ImprovingEyesight/comments/1q3hzr3/my_methods_and_results/ :) )

[u/HollerBastion → u/glowcubr]

I think I know what you mean by the vision becoming clearer after a certain amount of time. When I’m not walking around, I stay under the shade on the side of my house looking up the street at house. After about 30+ minutes of staring at that house I notice my vision become a little clearer. It might be the same amount of time when walking (I really can’t recall), but there are times when walking where areas have the sun beaming down forcing me to squint. Could that delay the time it’s takes your vision to get clearer?

[u/glowcubr → u/HollerBastion]

Yes, I've found that walking in such a way that the sun is in my eyes can be pretty detrimental to having my vision clear up, so I generally try to either stay in the shade and look toward a lit area or walk in such a way that my back is to the sun.

If I have to walk such that the sun is shining in my eyes, I put my hand up to block out the sun. This looks kind of silly, but it works XD (Like this, not like this, although I'm not sure it matters)

Wearing a baseball cap might also work and would look more normal, but I haven't tried this.

[u/pcoutcast]

For me it usually takes about 20 minutes of distance viewing outside without glasses before I see an improvement that I can measure on a Snellen chart.

[u/glowcubr → u/pcoutcast]

I should keep note. I bet mine is probably closer to 20 minutes than 15, too.

[u/pcoutcast → u/glowcubr]

During my first year of improvement I literally ran a stop watch each time I went for a walk (slightly obsessive yes). What's also interesting is occasionally I'd go for a 2-3 hour hike and noticed that after that first 20 minute bump there was another one at about 60 minutes and another at about the 120 minute mark.

The improvement wasn't just consistent in time, it was also consistent in amount, right around 0.75 lines on the Snellen per bump. So a 20 minute walk almost cleared 1 line, while a 2+ hour walk fully cleared 2 lines.

[u/glowcubr → u/pcoutcast]

I've noticed something like that, too! :D (Though I haven't tested exactly how much each improvement is or exactly when each occurred).

[u/HollerBastion → u/pcoutcast]

That’s insane in a good way wtf?!

[u/[deleted]]

Walking while looking into the distance is fine. You don’t need to stay in one spot. For screen-related eye strain, a common recommendation is looking about 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes.

[u/Low-Cardiologist9087]

More importantly, what are you actually trying to achieve with this?

If your goal is to compensate for a lot of near-field work during the day, I think the most effective approach is to reduce the amount of sustained convergence in the first place.

For near work, I often use only one eye at a time. I have a simple pair of glasses frames with one side blocked with cardboard, so the covered eye doesn't have to participate in convergence while I'm working at close distance.

As for walking outside, I don't think staring at one distant spot for a long time is necessarily better than simply looking into the distance naturally, without fixing on anything in particular, or shifting your attention between several distant objects.

For me, the main issue is the cumulative amount of near-distance convergent work throughout the day. So rather than trying to compensate for hours of convergence afterward, I prefer to reduce that convergence load during the near work itself.