When I get to class five minutes early, I end up feeling guilty if I spend them talking to a friend instead of reviewing for my next quiz. Very often, I feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. People steal from the wee hours of the morning to do homework and take the heart of the evening to go to club meetings and rehearsals.

The days in high school blend together one after another. The five minutes I spend daydreaming when I get to class early feel like a luxury I shouldn’t afford. However, small moments of downtime can actually provide a valuable reset from the rigors of a never-ending schedule.

Norms of High School Life

On Tuesday night, I was still editing my history paper at 12 a.m., knowing I had a math test in eight hours. That was just one night in a stretch of eight days that included four tests and a paper deadline. Sometimes it feels like the week will never end: choir rehearsal, private music lessons, club activities, homework every night, and sports practice create an airless back-to-back schedule that is the norm for every high school student.

The truth is that always chasing the next deadline makes time at ice cream shops or restaurants with friends a distant dream. So when I do take time after dinner to go to parties, I feel guilty.

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Start Doing Nothing

Today, after I finished my lunch and suddenly had an extra 15 minutes, I deliberated over “wasting” the quarter hour sitting on a bench taking in the beautiful fall day… or burying my nose in a book (again). The answer is that these unproductive times are more meaningful than we realize. Neuroscientists showed that daydreaming, especially spontaneous daydreaming, can actually improve learning and help us spot patterns. Staring at the clouds, dawdling on our way to class, or doodling in our notebooks may actually spark insight and recharge us. That’s why the best ideas sometimes arrive in the shower or while walking to the dining hall, not hunched over notes at midnight. Just like athletes who need time to rest and recover, our minds need time to shut off and gather energy for the next round of studying.

So while I’ve been sitting here trying to write this, I’ve turned away from my screen often to watch a squirrel do squirrel things in the tree outside my window. He often stops to keep his eye on me, or perhaps taunt me with his idleness, but after a while, I notice myself filling the page. My muse, it turns out, has been just outside my window the whole time. Had I chosen not to look out the window or, worse yet, resorted to scrolling on my phone, I would have missed the most important part of my day.

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Conclusion

So perhaps the real problem isn’t the hours themselves, but how we prioritize our lives, dismissing important downtime as failing. In the first month of boarding school, my struggle with time management taught me not just how to order my days but also how to value my time. Learning to drop the guilt and give myself scheduled time to “waste” has been my first real step toward academic and social success in high school. Choosing to “waste” our time is often just what we need to excel.