You lay in the bed you make. Or in my case, it’s an unused bed with books strewn across it and pencil marks staining the sheets.

We all create our own situations.

I chose the busy life. I chose the AP classes, the extracurriculars, the sports and I accept that some nights my bed does not get used for its rightful purpose. And I accept responsibility for that.

However, if you keep layering your bed with dozens of decorative pillows, liking the look of it all, but start to get tired of moving them every night before you go to sleep, you need to rethink the bed you made.

Each pillow we add is an extra responsibility. If you cannot keep up with the every day demand of these tasks, then the decorations should go. I think a lot of us are missing that memo.

Business has become an excuse for not following through on our responsibilities. Yes we all get busy, and yes sometimes it’s not always expected, but that’s when prioritizing needs to take place. In the real world, having a filled schedule is not an acceptable excuse.

If teachers don’t grade their students’ tests because they had parent-teacher conferences, students get upset. If doctors don’t write a prescription because their kid has a soccer game, somebody could get hurt. If the delivery guy doesn’t knock on our door within 30 minutes, even if he had seven other deliveries, we still expect a free pizza.

Many workplaces are starting to offer stress reduction programs and time management courses to help their employees battle everyday business. For every $1 spent on their employees’ well being , an employer can save $3.27 in medical costs by offering basic wellness programs such as meditation and yoga, according to a study conducted by Harvard University. These companies find that wellness programs help their employees become more productive, and manage their business more effectively while simultaneously reducing stress.

But, if you ask me, these classes are happening too late in the lives of these employees.

If Harvard, a member of the Ivy league, and employers around the world are seeing significant results in adults, imagine the possibility that a time management class could have on students. According to the University of California, Los Angeles students are able to learn more than adults, and having a time management class during school can help them forge behaviors they need later in life. If business is not tolerated as an excuse for not doing one’s homework, it’s even less tolerable in college and in the workplace.

From 1983 to 2009 there was a 6 percent raise in the number of individuals reporting everyday stress, according to the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. If we can’t handle an increasing number of tasks now and we fail to equip our future generations to do so, we will only see that percentage rise.

Prioritizing time management so it is a skill students must learn, whether it be in elementary school through guest speakers, or in high school as a class, can help save a future generation of bosses from lame excuses and help save a future generation of workers from an unslept-in bed.

While a few pillows are necessary, too many will take up the whole bed, leaving you with no room to rest.