If your mood depends on a text back, you’ve handed someone else the remote.

A delayed reply gets read as a verdict, when almost always it means a phone was face down, a shift was on, or a conversation was happening elsewhere. Meanwhile your afternoon is being run by a notification that has not arrived. The information you are waiting for is thin, and the hours it costs are not.

When you catch yourself checking, put the phone somewhere else for a fixed stretch and go do something with your hands. Set an end time so it is a decision rather than a punishment. You will care about the reply less from the middle of something else.