In my roles both as a student and a worker at Cairn, I have wrestled with the issue of organization and productivity. There exists, as far as I see, two major reasons for our inability to keep up with all the work: number one, we have too much to do; number two, we have too little time. In fact, after working with students and managing my own schedule, I observed that behind late papers, incomplete submissions, and neglected assignments, there hid poor time management.

But that’s not all. Also through observation, I noticed that even the most organized of us—armed with highlighters and scheduling apps—feel consistently overwhelmed and stressed during the semester. Something else underlies the problem. Now, if I had a cure-all, I would have distributed it a long time ago—for free. But of course, all of us have our own pace, needs, productivity times, and just generally how we do things. That, I think, is not the issue. I have come to believe quite strongly that the real determining factor for either great or poor time management comes from prioritization. And here I would like to propose a kind of solution that, although many have disagreed with me on this, gets at the core of the problem and, I believe, actually works:

Put God first and stop doing your homework on the Sabbath.

Some of you may think, “How is this related to time management?” And for a lot of us, this may sound way too radical. “How can I just spend my only free day over the weekend without doing any schoolwork?” I have heard this argument (defense?) many times. But please allow me to explain and share the reasons for why I believe Sabbath-breaking results in a weakened academic experience and why students should not do homework on Sundays.

#1: The Lord’s Day is the Lord’s.

The fourth commandment clearly states: “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exod. 20:8a). That means using the Sabbath (which our culture has determined to be a Sunday, but I’m not pitching my flag here, in case you observe a different day) to worship God to the exclusion of all other things. As I mentioned earlier, prioritization determines pretty much everything. Your priorities dictate your decisions, tasks you strive to accomplish first, places you go, thoughts you share or withhold, etc. For example, what matters more to you: a person’s feelings or the hard truth? Whichever you prioritize, it will guide you toward certain actions; in other words, if you really care about how a person would feel about your feedback, you wouldn’t just state the facts and drop the mic. The same principle applies to schoolwork: if you prioritize academic success, you would shape your schedule and lifestyle patterns to accommodate homework and study times – no matter what it takes. However, even for full-time students like us, should academic success really be the top priority? I don’t think so. Although students, we are Christ’s followers first – and that means putting Him before anything else. And, as we also know, Christ did not do away with the Law but fulfilled it (Matthew 5:17-20) – and we should strive to imitate Him. Plus, systematically breaking the fourth commandment under the pretext of schoolwork overload, in my opinion, just doesn’t sound convincing. How can we expect to achieve academic success when we cannot even dedicate a single day to the Lord alone? In the end, the Lord’s Day belongs to the Lord.

#2: Better organization skills.

Once you decide to leave your Sabbath alone, you will have to do some serious reshuffling. This would include not only a clearer schedule but also fewer leisurely times and more accountability checkpoints. Planners, calendars, homework-tracking apps and any other useful tools should become your new (or reclaimed) friends. On the surface, this seems like an ordeal: why do I need to do all this work just to do nothing on Sundays? But in reality, your efforts tell God – and the people around you – that you take His commands seriously and want to live in obedience to Him, even in little things.

#3: You will get rest.

A day of rest allows you to recharge and reset your mind to tackle yet another week. An absence of at least a full-day break leads to a feeling of restlessness and exhaustion. Mark Manson (I don’t agree with him on everything, but I do think he has a point here) gives an example of jogging for 10 minutes, then 20, and then for an hour. Just because you jog twice as much as 10 minutes doesn’t mean you will receive twice the health benefits; the same applies to an hour, and so forth. In Manson’s words, the ideal of linear productivity rarely works in real life; instead, you have diminishing returns or, simply put, a slowing down of quantity and quality. Manson also notes how work has an elastic property: no matter how much time you spend on it, it will keep on stretching. So, instead of running yourself thin by working every day of the week non-stop…just close your books and take a break. Just on Sunday.

And if worldly advice doesn’t convince you, consider this: God is literally saying, “You want to bring me honor? On the Sabbath, don’t do anything except worship me.” God commands you to rest just this one day because He knows it’s good for you. And for all the leisurely time you reduce on the weekdays, none of it goes to waste – you simply transfer your bets from a less rewarding investment to a fuller, more peaceful, more blessed one.

#4: Long-term benefits.

School doesn’t encompass your life; instead, its purpose lies in enhancing your life. The ability to prioritize wisely, however, will take you to good places long after graduation. And if you learn to prioritize God now – not later when school ends and “life finally begins” – then that will set a firm pattern for your other, bigger and riskier decisions.

#5: If you absolutely can’t NOT do homework on Sundays, do it for Bible classes only (but don’t make it a habit).

Think of this as more of a scaffolding advice rather than a rule: if you really wish to keep the Sabbath holy but still cannot fit your schoolwork into the other six days, then leave one or two Bible or theology-related assignments for the Sabbath. I say this in hopes that studying God and His Word will motivate you to meditate on Him and to deepen your understanding of Him. However, do not turn this into a long-term habit – eventually, you should strive to keep your Sabbath as clear of non-Sabbath activities as possible.

So this is my challenge to you: put God first and don’t do homework on the Sabbath. The pay-off? A deeper relationship with the Lord, a day of relaxation, a more focused mind over the week, well-sorted priorities, better planning… The list could go on and on. Because in the end, you are doing this not for self-righteousness but for honoring Him.