"I'd rather know than wonder"

If you don't check, you wonder. What's in there. Was that buzz the thing you've been waiting on. Checking ends the wondering, and the wondering is worse than anything the inbox is likely to hold. So the check is a mercy.

The wonder is real, and there's research that takes it seriously. Martin Pielot and Luz Rello had thirty volunteers turn off all notification alerts for a day and compared it with an ordinary day. People felt less distracted and got more done. But some of them also felt anxious, because they could no longer be as responsive as they believed others expected, and they felt less connected. So the wonder isn't imaginary. Take the buzz away and for some people it gets louder, at least at first.

But look at what the check does to it. You check, and there's nothing, and you're relieved. Twenty minutes later the wonder is back, because the check told you about twenty minutes ago and not about now. You check again. The relief is shorter this time. The check treats the wonder and the treatment wears off, and the more often you take it the less it lasts. The wonder is trained by the checking, in the same way the sender is trained by the reply. The earlier book The phone can wait is about this pull in general, and I won't repeat it, except to say that the work inbox is the pull with a justification attached.

Nicholas Fitz and colleagues tried a middle path in a field experiment with 237 people. Some got notifications as usual, some got none, and some got them delivered in batches three times a day. The batched group felt more attentive, in a better mood, less stressed and more in control of their phones. The group with no notifications at all got fewer of those benefits and reported more anxiety and more fear of missing out. So the answer to the wonder isn't never knowing. It's knowing at times you chose. The wonder settles when it learns there's a next time, and gets worse when it's told there's no time at all.

The objection is that the thing you're waiting on might be in there. It might. If it's a real emergency, the other door in chapter 19 will bring it to you. If it's not, it will be there at the next time you chose, and the sender will have got a reply at the time you said.

The practical point is that the check doesn't end the wonder. A known next check does.