The tug

Before the method, it helps to know the thing you're up against, because it's smaller than it feels.

The tug is the pull towards the phone that arrives while someone's talking. Notice when it comes. It's rarely at the interesting part. It comes in a pause. At a lull in the story. When the build-up is running long. When you know where this is going. When the phone lights. When it doesn't light but you wonder. It's a feeling in the hand and the eyes, a small restlessness, and it presents itself as a good idea, "I'll just check".

What it isn't is information. The tug doesn't know there's a message. It arrives on schedule whether there's one or not, because it's a habit's cue and not a signal from the world. Ward's finding in chapter 3, that the phone occupies attention even when unused, is what the tug feels like from inside. Part of you is holding a thread to the phone, and the thread pulls.

Treat it as a sensation. Not a command and not a failure. It shows up, it lasts a minute or less, and if you don't act on it, it goes, usually before the story does. It's much easier to sit through when the phone is away, which is why chapter 17 is about where it goes. A phone in the pocket produces a tug you can ignore. A phone on the table produces a tug with a screen attached.

Two more things. The tug is strongest in the first couple of weeks of not answering it, and then it thins, in my experience of habits generally and not from any study of this one. And the tug has nothing to do with the person talking. It arrives with your partner and your child and your closest friend alike, because it isn't about them. Knowing that takes some of the guilt out of it. Feeling the pull isn't a judgement on the story or the teller. It's just the habit, asking.

An earlier book in this series, The feeling will pass without help, is about urges in general. This is one of them, and the treatment is the same. Notice it, name it, let it pass, and look up.