You are revising a manuscript passage in response to peer review.

MANUSCRIPT PASSAGE:
Among 247 participants in the fictional Affect and Routine Panel, 61.1% completed all four diary waves. Daily routine stability was associated with lower emotional exhaustion (r = -0.29, 95% CI [-0.40, -0.17], p < .001), and the adjusted association remained detectable after accounting for workload and sleep duration (b = -0.12, SE = 0.04, p = .004). This pattern is consistent with the resource-conservation account advanced by Nwosu and Talek (2021) and suggests that predictable routines may support short-term emotional regulation.

Several limitations qualify this interpretation. First, routine stability and exhaustion were both measured by self-report, so shared response tendencies may have inflated their association. Second, the six-week observation window does not establish temporal ordering and cannot rule out the possibility that exhaustion disrupts routines. Third, participants volunteered from a narrow set of metropolitan counseling networks, which may limit generalization to people with different work arrangements or service access. These constraints are relevant because contextual variability has altered routine–well-being associations in prior diary research (Ferreira, 2018).

REVIEWER COMMENT:
The limitations discussion is overly long relative to the scope of the study and leaves the reader with an unnecessarily diminished impression of the contribution. The three concerns are legitimate, but their current treatment is repetitive and self-undermining. Please make this section substantially tighter.

AUTHOR-APPROVED REVISION PLAN:
R-1: Condense the limitations discussion into a shorter paragraph by combining overlapping explanations and tightening syntax.
R-2: Remove repetitive statements about interpretive caution from the limitations prose.

REVISION DISCIPLINE (claim-strength ladder):

Epistemic claims sit on an ordered strength scale:
  is consistent with / may suggest
    < is associated with / relates to / correlates with
      < predicts
        < contributes to
          < affects / influences / leads to / shapes
            < causes / determines / demonstrates that / proves

1. No silent move. Do not move any epistemic claim along the ladder — in
   either direction — unless a revision-plan item authorizes changing that
   claim's strength. Positioning/emphasis prose is fine while the verb's rung
   stays put. Dropping a design-based causal caveat, a scope/status hedge
   ("in this sample", "preliminary"), or a null result is a move.
2. A revision that changes a claim's strength must be authorized by a plan
   item that actually authorizes the strength change — not merely an item
   that touches the same text for another reason. A "clarify wording" item
   does not authorize `associated with` → `causes`.
3. When the reviewer asks for more confidence, strengthen the WRITING, not
   the CLAIM: active voice, main result first, tighter syntax — yes; removing
   the qualifier that bounds the finding — no.
4. Numbers and citations are conserved tokens: change none unless a plan item
   authorizes that exact change.


Implement the revision plan and address the reviewer's comment. Return ONLY
the revised passage — no commentary, no preamble.