Many people enjoy being busy, but having a schedule crowded with activities can often become chaotic. While being busy provides us with things to do, having a full schedule actually hurts you more than it is rewarding to you. There is a difference between being a high performer and being a workaholic; many times, being a workaholic means doing things just for the sole purpose of doing them.

Being too busy hinders your ability to do your best work on individual tasks. Rushing to finish a project before swiftly moving onto the next causes a person to do the bare minimum to finish a lot in little time due to a busy schedule. This mindset produces a poorer result and defeats the purpose of doing many things to ultimately receive a good payoff.

Time to decompress

Free time is seen as a valuable commodity that provides teenagers with a way to decompress. Just because some people have nothing to do doesn’t necessarily mean they will make poor decisions. Some people like to spend their time doing brainless activities like watching TV or being on their phone because with so much daily chaos, a break is needed.

Having too much free time is not what leads teenagers to be involved with drugs, alcohol or other delinquent activities. It wouldn’t really matter if they had free time or not, because they would make time regardless.

The pressure of being able to do everything is always expected of students so if something doesn’t get done, it is seen entirely as the students’ fault. Teachers and coaches don’t base their workload off of other classes or clubs, so they solely think of themselves as the priority rather than the priority of the student.  It’s difficult to choose between long hours of homework or sports practice. Some students might give up and do neither. A student should have enough time to finish what they have to do rather than place importance of one thing over the other. A student should not pack their schedule to the point where their activities aren’t on equal footing because that hinders their ability to give 100 percent.

Stress is not mandatory for teenagers

From preschool to the last day of graduation, students are under stress from a variety of different activities. At what point is it too much? Stress as a teenager is different from stress as an adult. Teens have to deal with grades, friends, family, teachers and outside interests and that can lead to a very stressful burnout, evidenced by senioritis and lack of motivation.  Teenagers should not have to subject themselves to stress just to come up with ways to handle it, when in reality, stress should just be a minor issue. Knowing how to handle stress as a teenager is not a prerequisite for adulthood. At the end of the day teenagers are still kids and they should be able to experience life like a kid would, without stress.