The Cult of Busyness: How High-Performing Leaders Burn Out Without Noticing

Why Busyness Doesn’t Always Lead to Fulfilment

Are you busy, or just afraid to stop?

Hi, and welcome back to Beneath the Busy, the podcast where we go beneath the surface of workplace productivity and explore what really sustains us.

In today’s episode, we’re looking at how sometimes doing more doesn’t necessarily lead us to feeling more—more fulfilled, more enough—and how, even on our busiest days, we can still be left with a strange sense of emptiness.

But before we dive in, let’s take a moment to pause together.

Wherever you are, whether in motion or at rest, let’s just stop and take a deep breath in.

Hold it for a little bit.

And let it out.

Allow yourself to be fully present.

You know that strange end-of-day feeling where you’ve responded to all your emails, ticked all the boxes, attended back-to-back meetings, and yet you still have the feeling that you haven’t accomplished anything? Anything that really matters?

You were busy, for sure. But were you productive? Maybe not.

Let’s face it, busyness warps the mirror. It inflates what doesn’t really matter and hides what does. It’s a bit like one of those funfair mirrors—except it’s really not fun, and it’s definitely not fair the way things become distorted in our perception.

Today, I’m going to uncover how we’ve created this treadmill for ourselves and why we struggle to get off it. We’re lifting the hood on what’s underneath our addiction to busyness, and I want to highlight some of the leadership burnout warning signs that might indicate you’ve subscribed to this cult of busyness and could be heading towards burnout.

The Hidden Psychology of the Cult of Busyness

This cult of busyness—what I also call the busyness syndrome—isn’t just cultural. Society definitely fuels it, but it’s also deeply personal.

Underneath this pressure to keep being busy is something much more deep-seated.

It’s often the people who seem the most composed, the highest performers and achievers, who are most addicted to busyness. It’s as if we’re allergic to empty space. If there’s a gap, we fill it. If there’s no metric, we create one. And if the mirror doesn’t reflect progress, instead of adjusting the mirror, we push ourselves harder.

But underneath all this effort is a quiet fear.

The voice beneath the effort often sounds something like this:

“If I stop, if I’m not so busy, will I still be enough?”

“Will I still be approved of?”

Because there’s a big difference between movement and momentum.

Many of us are stuck in movement. We believe that if we keep answering emails, responding to Slack messages, attending meetings, and solving problems, then we’re being productive.

But momentum is different.

Momentum moves us forward in ways that matter. It’s about moving the needle and creating meaningful impact.

The challenge is that movement is easier to measure. We can count emails answered, projects completed, meetings attended, and problems solved. Movement feels tangible and visible, even when we’re simply going around in circles.

Hysterical Industriousness and Hurry Sickness

The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk refers to this as hysterical industriousness.

I love that phrase.

It’s a kind of hysteria, a frenzy of hustle culture, a constant need to be on, moving, performing, filling every empty space, and being visibly productive.

Alan Seale takes the idea even further. He describes modern life as a state of hurry sickness or busyness disorder. He also speaks about the mood of seriosity, where everything feels urgent, important, and intensely serious.

Together, hysterical industriousness, hurry sickness, busyness disorder, and the mood of seriosity create a state where our sympathetic nervous system is permanently activated.

We’re constantly operating as though we’re under threat.

As though the building is always on fire.

As though every situation requires immediate action.

In that state, we cannot lead effectively.

When we’re rushing from one urgent demand to the next, we lose perspective. We stop asking important questions:

• What actually matters here?
• Where can I add the most value?
• What will create meaningful impact?

As a leader, your pace affects everyone around you.

You determine the weather system in your team.

When Busyness Becomes a Badge of Honour

What does this look like in practice?

We’ve started equating busyness with importance and busyness with worthiness.

Back-to-back meetings?

You’re committed.

Replying to emails at 10 p.m.?

You’re dedicated.

Working through lunch?

You’re a team player.

Staying late every evening?

You’re highly engaged.

Welcome to the cult of busyness.

We’re all card-carrying members.

The sad thing is that membership is free. It simply requires us to abandon our common sense.

If you haven’t listened to Season 1, Episode 3, Busy Is the New Lazy, I encourage you to do so because it provides an important foundation for today’s conversation.

I also want to revisit something I discussed in Episode 1: how elite athletes train.

Top-performing athletes understand that recovery is part of performance. They don’t just train hard; they recover hard as well.

But in leadership, we often treat rest as something that must be earned.

We tell people:

“Enjoy your leave. You really deserve it.”

“You’ve worked so hard. You’ve earned this break.”

Why is rest something we have to earn?

Why do we need to prove our worth before we allow ourselves to recover?

This mindset slowly erodes both performance and capacity.

If your answer to declining performance is simply adding more hours, you’re not solving the problem. You’re creating a bigger one.

The longer we push through exhaustion, the less effective our cognitive capability becomes, and the more our physical energy deteriorates.

Why Reflection Is a Leadership Skill

One of the biggest myths leaders hold is:

“If I pause, I’ll fall behind.”

“I don’t have time to stop.”

“I need to keep going or the to-do list will grow.”

But the truth is that if you don’t pause, you’ll lose direction.

You’ll lose perspective.

And most likely, you won’t even notice it’s happening.

Exhaustion is not a leadership strategy.

It’s a leadership risk.

Thinking time isn’t a luxury.

It’s a leadership skill.

No pause. No perspective.

No perspective. No leadership.

Leadership requires the ability to zoom out, reflect, prioritise, make decisions, and set direction before returning to the operational work.

The best leaders I know deliberately create pauses.

Not as grand gestures.

Not by disappearing for hours.

But through regular checkpoints for reflection and recovery.

There are two types of pauses:

The first is strategic reflection—thinking, zooming out, and examining priorities.

The second is genuine recovery and rest.

Both are leadership practices.

Both are essential.

Because wellbeing is not an indulgence.

It’s a core leadership competency.

Creating Space for Meaningful Work

Many leaders find themselves trapped in a paradox.

They know what they need, but they don’t feel they have permission to create space for it.

My encouragement is simple:

Give yourself permission.

Work is designed to be endless.

There will always be more emails, more projects, more demands, and more expectations.

Waiting for work to quieten down is a losing strategy because it never will.

We have to create space within the busyness.

That means becoming comfortable with incompletion.

Ending the day knowing there are unread emails.

Knowing there are tasks still waiting.

Knowing that everything isn’t finished.

Because even if you complete everything today, there will still be more waiting tomorrow.

For most of us, we’re not emergency medical services.

And yet we behave as though every unfinished task is a life-or-death situation.

The reality is that you can still be a high performer even when everything isn’t completed.

In fact, you must learn to accept that reality if you want to sustain your performance over the long term.