The threat system fires in under a second, and conscious oversight needs two or three. A time-out is not a clever technique, it is just a way of surviving that gap.

What the research says

In a controlled comparison, children who practised a brief attention-training exercise then waited longer for a bigger reward than children who did progressive muscle relaxation or nothing, which suggests waiting is trainable rather than fixed. A meta-analysis of young people with ADHD found a reliable preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed ones, so if waiting is genuinely harder for you, that is a measurable difference and not a character flaw. Both are studies of children, and neither measured anger.

Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.