Thisss! Being on Steemit and on Discord has made me particularly sensitive to red dots. Before, it would take me many minutes to hours to realise that I had a notification in an app, and that there was a red dot or some other signal, but now, every time that I check the notifications, they're from seconds ago. It seems I have effectively trained myself to notice these differences right away and consider them important.
Hmmm, I hear you on checking things manually, and I do that with my phone, but I prefer to have notifications for Steem-related stuff because sometimes, people will only answer to a response if it comes immediately (otherwise they will respond, stay for 5 minutes and go somewhere else and come back in a few hours or days to read what you said).
I was like than before too, constantly checking everything and trying to answer everyone as soon as I could, but now I'm more relaxed. The messages will all be there later too, and rarely it's anything that time sensitive.