What If You Just... Stopped for a Minute
Your brain doesn't shift between tasks as fast as your schedule demands. Here's a 60-second micro-transition practice that can change your whole afternoon.
Here's a quote, a resource, a book, and an affirmation to help power you through the rest of the week.
QUOTE
"The space between stimulus and response is where our freedom lies." — Viktor Frankl
RESOURCE: The 60-Second Reset: How Micro-Transitions Can Save Your Afternoon
February turns your whole day into one long blur. Bell rings, kids leave, new kids arrive. You eat lunch standing up — if you eat at all. By 2:00 PM, you can't remember what happened at 9:00 AM. Sound familiar?
Your brain doesn't instantly shift between tasks. It carries residue from the last thing you were doing — psychologists call it "attention residue." Every period change, every pivot from teaching to emails to bus duty, leaves a residue until your brain feels like it's running in mud. Not burnout, exactly. More like your mental browser has 47 tabs open, and none of them will close.
You don't need a meditation retreat. You need sixty seconds.
A micro-transition is a deliberate pause between one thing and the next. Not to be productive. Not to plan. Just to let your brain close one tab before opening another.
I started doing this last year, thirty seconds after lunch. Sometimes, right in front of the students, before we start class. One inhale. One exhale, done. Embarrassingly simple. It actually helps.
Try it this week:
Between classes — stand in your doorway. Three breaths. Feel your feet on the floor. That's it.
Before lunch duty — close your eyes at your desk for sixty seconds. Set a timer if you don't trust yourself.
In the car before you walk inside — one full exhale. Leave school in the car.
After your last student leaves — sit down. Don't clean up yet. Just sit for one minute.
Neuroscience backs this up — even brief intentional pauses reset your prefrontal cortex. That's the part that's been making every decision all day and is completely fried by the afternoon. Sixty seconds isn't a luxury. It's maintenance.
Will one pause fix February? No. (Nothing will, and anyone promising otherwise is selling something.) But it might make the afternoon feel less like a wall you keep running into.
BOOK: Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Pang — a Stanford researcher — makes a case I think most teachers need to hear: rest isn't the absence of work. It's a skill that improves your work. He digs into neuroscience and the habits of history's most productive minds to show that deliberate pauses aren't a luxury. They're the engine. If the 60-second reset idea resonated, this book will show you why. 👉 Get it on Amazon | Teacher Reset Book Recommendations
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WORTH YOUR TIME
✍️ February Behavior Management: Understanding Dysregulation vs. Defiance
✍️ Creating Engagement in February: The Micro-Milestone Method
🎙️ The 5 Real Causes of Teacher Burnout (And What Actually Helps)
"Where Are You With AI? (And Why Starting Here Matters)
AFFIRMATION
I don't have to earn the pause. It's already mine.
P.S. If February feels like one long Monday, you're not imagining it. Inside The STRONG Teacher's Lounge, teachers are sharing what's actually getting them through this stretch. The micro-practices. The honest conversations. The stuff that actually works. Come sit with us.
