Nine Hours of Hall Duty: An Accidental and Refreshing Break
This week, our schools did the state-mandated math and ELA testing. To support the teachers and students, many of us in the home office served as hall monitors—tracking down the tech team if there were issues with laptops, escorting kids who needed to use the restroom, and stepping in for teachers as needed.
On the last day, a middle school teacher asked me to step into her classroom. What I didn’t realize was that the students had just finished their testing. That is, they’d been sitting still, not talking, and focusing for three hours, and I was the authority figure. None of my policy and management courses at education school gave any insights on how to handle a gaggle of restless teenagers with that kind of energy!
Luckily, I knew enough to adopt an authoritative stance and deploy my finely honed dad skill for giving kids an “I know you’re thinking about misbehaving” look. We all made it through the three minutes of supervision.
Supporting the testing was great for another reason—it created a break from the normal hustle and bustle of meetings. Instead of rushing from topic to topic, being a hall monitor meant having time for extended casual conversation with colleagues (at a low volume, of course). Rather than focusing on getting through an agenda, I was able to ask the kinds of questions that led to deeper insights. “I’ve been wondering about X. What’s your perspective on why that’s happening?”
Moreover, because the testing security rules require that you not carry any technology, it was a delightful break from staring at my computer screen and the constant stream of notifications on my phone and watch. It was a fantastic opportunity to sit, think, and write without distraction—all of which helped me generate new insights.
And because I wasn’t looking at my screens or walking through the buildings, I was able to look at the buildings with fresh eyes. Given that the facilities team is part of my responsibility, time spent just looking at the wall or staring at the ceiling was actually productive. When I finally got a chance to analyze the facilities questions from our all-staff survey, I had much greater context for the data.
The experience was a reminder of the negative impact of having devices on us all the time. As the computer scientist and author Cal Newport writes in a recent New York Times essay, our brains have essentially been trained by our phones to expect a quick hit of stimulation, “creating an insistent urge to pick up the device.” The result, he argues, is that sustained focus becomes “a battle of willpower — a battle we all too often lose.”
It also raised a related point: much of our busyness results from how we organize ourselves for work. For example, the software developer Basecamp implements “library rules” at its office, rather than allowing it to be a naturally noisy and distracting environment. According to It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, Basecamp also allows people to set office hours—the windows in which they’re available for coordination—to enable focused work elsewhere.
Similarly, many companies implement no-email and no-meeting windows or use “quieter” project coordination tools designed for that purpose. Effective coordination still occurs, it’s just more structured, rather than a free-for-all.
We don’t have to accept the feelings of overwhelm and distraction that modern work can generate as natural or inevitable. They’re a result of our choices about how we organize work, and there are plenty of easily accessible solutions.
Or you can just go work for an organization that conducts state testing.