Nobody is coming to give you permission

The reward framing is a trap with no exit, so stop waiting for the bell.

The reward framing sounds responsible. Finish the work, then play. It has the shape of discipline and the tone of an adult who has their affairs in order. The problem is arithmetical. Work in its modern form is not a bounded quantity with a bottom to it. It is a stream. There is always another item, another message, another thing that would be good to get on top of before the week turns. If play is the reward for reaching the end of a stream, play is cancelled permanently, and the cancellation is dressed up as maturity so nobody thinks to complain about it.

The alternative is not indulgence. It is scheduling play as a peer of other commitments rather than as a bonus paid out of surplus. You do not wait until the work is finished to eat dinner, or to sleep, or to sit outside for ten minutes. These things get slots because you have decided in advance that they are non negotiable, and the work rearranges itself around them, grumbling but compliant. Play is capable of the same treatment. The only thing standing in the way is the suspicion that you have not earned it, which is a suspicion worth interrogating and then ignoring.

Permission, if you are waiting for it, is not arriving by post. There is no authority in your life whose job it is to tap you on the shoulder and confirm that you are now allowed an evening of something pointless. The permission is yours to issue and always has been. The odd part is how physically difficult it feels to issue it: the first time you decline something reasonable in order to go and push small objects around a board, there is a distinct sensation of getting away with something. Sit with that sensation. It fades, and what is underneath it is just an ordinary good evening.