How to Get the Most From Your Days
A high schooler's week is busy, but there's still more open time than most realize. After sleep, school, chores, extracurriculars, travel, and homework, a typical student has about 54 hours a week that aren't spoken for.
That time can become rest, friendships, new interests, useful skills, or simply room to think. Time is valuable, but we shouldn’t necessarily be looking to optimize and fill every second of every day. Instead, our goal is to help students notice where their time goes so they can be more deliberate about what they want from it.
How can students strategize to make better use of the time they have?
Step 1: Get an Honest Picture Together
Start with judgement-free curiosity. For one week, have your teen track where their time goes: a tool like Toggl Track works, or even just a running note on a phone. This provides a general outline of the week.
Most students are surprised by what turns up: a productive-feeling study session riddled with breaks, or maybe something that was viewed as a minor activity eating up hours. Task switching also takes up considerable energy that doesn’t necessarily get noticed!
Step 2: Protect Some Open Time
Ask what they wish they had more room for. Perhaps sleep, working out, time with friends, reading, music, one unplanned afternoon. Then help them carve out a small, protected block for it.
If distractions keep eating into that time, let students pick their own guardrails: an app like Freedom, a phone's focus mode, or leaving it in another room. A rule they set for themselves tends to stick.
Step 3: Let them get bored without requirements
Not every open hour needs a plan. Boredom makes room for daydreaming, tinkering, wandering outside, or randomly deciding to try something new. Resist the urge to solve it for them.
Unstructured time often earns its keep precisely because nobody assigned it a purpose.
Step 4: Help Them Discover What They Might Like
Interests rarely show up fully formed. Most grow slowly, out of exposure and trial and error. Instead of asking "what hobby do you want?" or “what will look good for college?” help them rack up experiences.
Turn an online rabbit hole into something real. Cooking videos might lead to one ambitious dinner; a sneaker obsession into design or resale economics; sports clips into coaching or refereeing.
Give them a small mission instead of a big question: find the best taco within ten miles, restore a $20 thrift-store find, learn three songs on guitar, build a shelf. A concrete project beats "go find your passion."
Borrow someone else's world for a day: shadow a relative at work, tag along with a friend to practice, or volunteer at an event.
Revisit old interests and notice envy. "I wish I could do that" is worth a follow-up. "Want to try?"
Keep experiments short: two or three tries with permission to quit after that. Curiosity moves faster without the weight of a long commitment. Persistence is valuable, but it’s a delicate line. No need to invest energy and honor sunk costs in an activity that does not suit them!
Step 5: Encourage, Don't Manage
When something finally catches, resist turning it into another assignment. Help with materials, a ride, a class, or an introduction, then let them decide how serious it gets.
If they want more structure, let it be their choice: a calendar, a task list, a focus timer, an AI tool that breaks a project into steps. What matters is whether it feels like theirs.
None of this is really about engineering a perfectly optimized teenager. Rather, the intention is to give a young person practice deciding - for themselves - what their time is worth.