Does this sound familiar: you wake up, hit the snooze button on your phone, fall asleep again, finally wake up, get up from your bed, eat breakfast (most of the time), brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed, and go off to school. You get through eight periods and stay after school for sports and other extracurricular activities. You finally get home and the clock reads 7:00. There is little time left for you to do homework and possibly study. Then, it’s time for dinner and, finally, you go to bed feeling exhausted. Sound somewhat familiar?

We humans are increasingly becoming automaton robots. We do the same things every single day. Sure, each day may be unique, but we almost always follow the same pattern. 

Doing things routinely has its pros and cons. Daily routines can help the unorganized to become organized. The routine may even be efficient and save precious time for later. However, daily routines are not always fun. They can get boring after awhile and prevent the enjoyment of other pursuits.

Adolescents have an amazingly busy lifestyle. How much free time does the average teenager have on a typical school day? It’s probably safe to say the number is not a lot. I’ve heard countless peers say “I had no time to do my homework.” Students sometimes feel anxious with the amount of work they have since it makes them extremely busy. 

Kidshealth.org conducted a KidsPoll about business with 882 girls and boys ages 9 to 13. 90 percent of them said they felt nervous because they were too busy. 61 percent of them said that they wished they had more free time. In this day and age, everybody feels they have to do something at every given moment.

 In her article in the New York Times, Alina Tugend mentions, “Not only are we constantly occupied, but we, as Americans, are also famous for not knowing how to be unoccupied.” We are not only constantly busy, but we don’t know how to not be busy.

The busyness of life can be correlated to the amount of sleep that high schools students get. Many students have to stay up late to finish homework or study for a test. According to Sylviane Duval, a writer for Center for Advancing Health, a large study states that only 8 percent of high school students get adequate sleep on a typical school night. Life should not be this busy.