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Good morning. Yesterday this programme featured the story of a junior rugby club in Wales. Due to bad behaviour at their games, the club decided it was time to take action. They placed a large sign on the touchline, requesting better manners. However this sign was not aimed at the kids - they weren't the problem. The culprits of yelling at the referee, stomping and sulking were, in fact, the parents. The sign said, in capital letters, “Please remember: These are just kids. This is a game. This is not the Six Nations!” The club say it’s an attempt to remind parents the game is meant to be fun for the children – a place to play and not a stressful, high performance environment. It’s sparked comments from child psychologists about the importance of unstructured leisure time for children. Nowadays many kids have a more intense schedule than adults, with football, ballet, piano lessons and parties in addition to a full week at school. As the psychologists rightfully say, unstructured time has crucial benefits for child development as their imagination gets space to breathe and grow. Catholic priest Henri Nouwen emphasized the need for adults to hold on to this value of rest, play, and time that isn’t filled. Today’s success-driven culture tempts us to schedule every hour with a goal-oriented task or social engagement. Nouwen’s bluntly critical of this, saying: “Being busy has become a status symbol”. The buzz of social media has added to this epidemic of activity. Unless we have new achievements to tweet about, or impressive photos to upload, we may feel we’re not keeping up. As a result, if there’s a space in our calendar we’re likely to fill it with something. Nouwen suggests that instead of assuming time is simply there to be filled, we should purposefully leave some of it open. Unplanned. Unstructured. Available for spontaneity and imagination. He argues that by adding this into our lives, we become more flexible, compassionate and present. When every minute is scheduled to the hilt, interruptions are annoying. But by building in a margin of flexibility, we’re able to make time and space for others. Nouwen argues that when we do that, what previously would have seemed like “interruptions” may turn out to be our most meaningful opportunities of the day – the chance to show hospitality to an unexpected visitor, to stop and help a lost person on the street, or just notice the beauty in the world around us. Of course time-management and productivity have an important place in our lives. But without balance they become unhealthy and unsustainable. In today’s society, leaving unstructured time in our schedules can feel like a countercultural act. Yet the rewards of renewed energy and imagination may make those times the most productive thing we do all week.