Walk in the hallway

#hallway#walking#door#moving

A hallway is nowhere. What was going on has ended, what is coming has not begun, and in between there is only a stretch to walk. That sounds simple but is for many the hardest part of the day. The pictures below give the stretch a destination.

A child walks down a hallway between two open doors.

♀

Walk in the hallway

A child walks down a hallway between two open doors.

About this visual support

Transitions cost more than they look. Leaving a room means letting go of what was happening there, and entering the next means switching to something that is not yet in your head. The hallway in between has no task of its own, so it easily fills with other things: stopping, looking, talking, turning back. For anyone who needs longer to change focus, that is where the day often loses time without anyone planning it.

Visual support gives the stretch content. A picture of the destination, the classroom or the kitchen for instance, gives the walk a direction instead of being pure gap. A picture in the hand also works better than an instruction already forgotten after three steps.

A concrete tip is to say where you are going, not what you are stopping. A destination pulls better than a halt. In Routined the moves can sit as their own short steps between activities, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.