Scheduling and priorities

I am NOT running the seattle half marathon. In an earlier blog, I had contemplated running the half provided I put in effort during the "test period". It so happened that I didn't run at all the whole of last week...so where and when I run my second half mary is not known. The thing about grad life is that if you are doing moderate portions of different activities(work, play, state of joblessness, etc), you are doing great! Once one of these activities gets sidelined, things become frustrating.
Excess work -> stressful -> Need for an outlet.
Excess joblessness -> Need to make up for lost time -> Excess work ->stressful->Need for an outlet.
The first chain shows the effect of excess work and its ramifications.
The second chain shows why excess work may arise in the first place.
Now you might argue that one might genuinely be hard-pressed for time. But given that everyone is busy in this fast-paced world, the schedule of any activity in the purview of ones influence area(activities one might be likely to do) is known much before hand to make meaningful schedules that could be followed without real stress.
As in, if I know that I got to do such and such activities within such and such time periods on different days, and if I were to perfectly follow the schedule, there will always be room to be jobless. I.e. my being jobless is integrated into the schedule, reducing stress. So it all boils down to the optimum amount of being jobless, being involved in work and play, i.e. scheduling your activities to meet your priorities in life.