Send a message that matters, and part of the next hour may be spent waiting for the answer. The phone offers a quick test: look, refresh, leave, then look again. The check may confirm that nothing has changed, but it does not settle what happens next. The task is still unfinished.
Michael described a five-hour checking session with no clear object
In a short 2019 manuscript entry, Michael records moving through email, Facebook, Amazon, text messages, WhatsApp, book reviews, comments, a movie and information about the movie. Then email again.
“I truly don't know what I'm looking for,” he writes. The waiting itself had become difficult: Did they respond? What did they say? Checking offered brief relief, followed by another check.
This is one person's account. It does not prove that every unanswered message produces the same response, and it does not identify one mechanism that explains all of his checking. It does show the practical problem clearly: an online action can remain mentally active after the device is put down.
“Open loop” is a useful label, not a diagnosis
Michael's older digital-detox material calls unfinished messages, expected replies and unresolved tasks “open loops.” The term makes sense as a planning metaphor. It becomes misleading when used as a medical label or as proof that a platform caused anxiety.
Three different things can be mixed together:
These experiences may overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Research on an unfinished personal goal cannot automatically be used to explain every feed, notification, cliffhanger or checking habit.
Research supports a narrower claim about unfinished goals and plans
In a 2011 series of studies, E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister activated goals that participants had not completed. Unfinished goals were associated with intrusive thoughts during an unrelated reading task, greater accessibility of goal-related words and poorer performance on an unrelated anagram task in different studies.
The important result was not that participants had to finish everything. When they made specific plans for the unfinished goals, the measured activation and interference effects were eliminated in those experiments. The authors' account is that a credible plan can suspend the drive to pursue a goal until the specified time.
This supports writing down when and how a real unfinished task will be handled. It does not show that a vague promise to “check later” works, that every social message is a goal, or that plan-making removes serious worry in every context.
Read the study abstract on PubMed
A notification can interrupt attention before we answer it
A separate 2015 experiment tested the immediate attentional cost of phone notifications. Participants performing an attention-demanding task were disrupted by call or text notifications even when they did not interact with the phone. That is evidence of short-term task disruption in the experiment. It does not establish lasting harm or prove what any one notification means to the person receiving it.
Research on interrupted task goals also finds that resuming work takes longer after longer or more demanding interruptions. Together, these studies support a modest practical conclusion: reducing unnecessary alerts and recording where to resume can protect the task in front of us. They do not turn all messages into a mental-health problem.
Read the notification experiment · Read the task-resumption experiments
Checking is not the same as closing
A check answers one question: what is visible right now? It may not answer the question that matters. If the other person has not replied, the decision is still pending. If the project has no next action, the project is still vague. If the feed has no end, another refresh can create more material without finishing anything.
Closure does not always mean completion. It can mean deciding:
- the next physical action;
- the time and place for that action;
- the date after which a missing reply will be followed up;
- what will happen if the reply never comes;
- or that the task, conversation or piece of media has been abandoned.
A decision that cannot be acted on yet needs a trusted place and a return time. Otherwise the phone remains the reminder system.
Use a four-part closure note
For each message or online task that keeps returning, write four lines:
- What is unfinished? Use a complete sentence: “I am waiting for Sam to confirm Thursday,” not “Sam.”
- What happens next? Name the action under your control: send one follow-up, choose without the reply, or do nothing.
- When will I return? Put an actual time on the calendar or task list.
- What would make it urgent? State the condition and the separate route. Do not call general curiosity urgent.
Use this as a planning exercise, not as a proven treatment. If repeated checking is harming your life and you cannot stop, find meetings and professional support.
Close social expectations before going offline
Michael's 2018 practical book makes a less psychological point: sometimes checking continues because other people reasonably expect a response. Before a planned break, tell the necessary contacts the unavailable period, the return time and the route for a genuine urgent matter.
An autoresponder can use plain language:
I'm offline until [date and time] and will not read this inbox before then. For [defined urgent matter], contact [person or route]. Otherwise, I will reply after [date].
Do not promise an exact response time that cannot be met. Do not direct every sender to a personal emergency channel. The message is useful only when it creates accurate expectations.
Do not create ten new conversations while trying to close five
Michael's older advice includes a practical warning: announcing a break on every platform can start fresh discussions about the break. Each discussion may create another expected reply.
Tell the people whose plans, care or work are affected. Use one announcement where a group genuinely needs it. Leave optional conversations alone. A preparation session should reduce outstanding commitments, not become a farewell tour through every inbox.
Some loops should remain monitored
A pending medical result, a child or dependant's safety, travel disruption, legal deadlines or an active work incident may require contact. The answer is not to suppress a necessary message to complete a detox.
Define the monitoring instead: which person or service can interrupt, on which channel, during which hours, and who else can cover it. Keep the necessary route available and remove unrelated alerts around it. If the risk cannot be bounded, postpone or narrow the offline period.
When a plan does not reduce the checking
Planning is not a guarantee. The expected reply may carry grief, conflict, money, health or another consequence that remains difficult even when the next action is clear. Repeated checking may also continue after alerts are off and a return time is written down.
If checking repeatedly costs sleep, work, safety or relationships, or continues despite sustained attempts to stop, a more severe private rule may not be the right next move. The site's serious-help directory lists free meetings and professional-help routes. A practical starting experiment is the one-day digital detox plan, which keeps essential access and closes necessary expectations before the break.
Research
Research: Masicampo and Baumeister, “Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(4), 2011; Stothart, Mitchum and Yehnert, “The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 41(4), 2015; Monk, Trafton and Boehm-Davis, “The effect of interruption duration and demand on resuming suspended goals,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 14(4), 2008. Evidence checked 10 August 2026.
Michael has spent much of his working life online—and much of the rest of it trying to stop that technology taking over. He has thrown a phone into a lake, locked devices in boxes and experimented with long periods offline. He writes about what helped, what failed and how to keep the useful parts of digital life.