Before you react, ask: does this matter in five minutes, or in five years? Respond to the right clock.

Reactions get sized by how loud something feels rather than how long it will last, and those two rarely line up. A five-minute problem given a five-year response burns relationships over nothing. The reverse happens too, when something genuinely important gets a shrug because it arrived quietly.

Before you respond to something that stings, put a rough timescale on it. Five-minute things get a short answer or none at all. Five-year things get your attention, a night’s sleep, and a proper conversation instead of a fast reply.