How to continue script when element is not found in selenium

I am using selenium web driver and appium as this is mobile application automation,

I am trying to check that if element is there or not and based on that I have put conditions.

 long starttime = System.currentTimeMillis();
 long endtime = starttime + 60*1000; // 60 seconds * 1000 ms/sec;


while(System.currentTimeMillis() < endtime)
{

    notcount = driver.findElement(By.id(AppConstants.notificationcount));

}

if(notcount.equals(null))

{

    System.out.println("No Element found");
}
else
{

    //SOME ANOTHER STEPS
}

Here issue is when element is not there , instead to redirect to ELSE part , selenium stops execution and throwing exception.

I do not want to use List -findelements here as that is taking long time to find element.

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