My experience (as someone who spends too much time on my phone) is that a smartwatch helps avoiding me getting sucked in by my phone.

It’s much less usable and I hate constant notifications on my wrist, so I’ll usually have it on mute and do a quick check at my notifications occasionally to see if there’s anything urgent (usually work or a message from my wife).

I’ll mostly ignore my group chats on WhatsApp and emails, and there’s no risk of me getting sucked into group coversations with friends, YouTube or the Internet (I don’t have social media apps on my phone so that’s not too much of an issue), which is where the real time sink is for me.

Concur with parent post. I find the watch (Samsung here) to provide me with reassurance that servers aren't all down, CEO isn't sending bat signals, etc. I leave my phone in the cat when I go to dinner with wife and other attention-sensitive scenarios.

My main distraction/entertainment is reading on the internet (like HN), and I cannot do that on the watch. And it’s difficult to message back and forth, plus I have those notifications off.

Same thing when going to sleep, I don’t take phone near the bed, just have the watch on which has my alarms to wake me up with vibrate function.