I feel the same way. I found it interesting that when smartwatches came out, people were excited about being able to see text messages or other notifications on their wrist.

As someone who felt the need to be on top of things, receiving notifications was slightly stressful as it meant something I'd have to evaluate and make a decision on "right now". (Obviously, feeling like I should react to things immediately was something I had to work on in myself, but the phone didn't help.) Feeling a notification buzz on my phone gave me slight anxiety as I'd immediately react with, "oh, what is this that I might need to take care of?" Putting the phone aside for periods helped, so the idea of not being able to escape it with notifications on my wrist was a little terrifying.

In the last few years, I've set my phone to always Do Not Disturb mode, so it doesn't vibrate or even light up when a notification comes in. I do the same on my Mac. It's helped quite a bit with my stress levels. I just manually check periodically to see if there's a notification instead of always feeling like it could go off any minute.

If you are interested, watches like the Amazfit (Bip) or perhaps Garmin are low-ish tech while still giving health information/basic alarms etc.

I’ve found the opposite. The apple watch isn’t distracting at all if you turn off notifications

You can do some things quickly without sinking into the infinite scroll of the phone. I.e. you can check your calendar and that’s it