This Is Why Successful People Choose Stillness Over Constant Busyness

If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you’ll get stuck in the Busy Bee burnout pattern.

Photo by Jasmin Chew on Unsplash

Your brain doesn’t always need more analysis, but a pause.

Change isn’t easy. But designing the next chapter isn’t about creating a five-year plan or grinding until you bleed to make it happen.

It’s about pausing long enough to decide what’s worth carrying forward, and what you’re finally ready to let go.

Sounds simple in theory.

Feels nigh on impossible if your whole identity is built on busyness.

When you don’t even have time to go to the bathroom between calls or cook a healthy meal without glancing at your inbox, how are you supposed to ponder a better future?

It starts with narrowing your focus to the basic steps you can control.

In creating gaps to let your brain, body, and values catch up, instead of blocking your own recovery with over-action.

Here’s a coaching case study that shows how.

Jordan’s story: the Busy Bee in action

Jordan (not their real name) came into therapeutic coaching after noticing unhelpful habits that were making his anxiety worse in new client engagements.

Outwardly, he looked fine, was successful - thriving consulting business, plenty of projects and board commitments, and financially secure.

If there was a gap in the calendar, he filled it.

But under the surface, he was exhausted.

Decision-making felt harder. Anxiety was keeping him up at night.

He avoided conflict with new clients by over-delivering, even when it cost him confidence and peace of mind.

When I asked what he wanted next in life, he reeled off a list of tasks, new opportunities, or possible client projects.

Nothing about personal goals, values, or desires. Every work-related item was “essential” though.

Then he mentioned almost in passing that his father had died a few months earlier.

It’s fine,” he said. Expected as he was ill, so inevitable.

But it wasn’t fine. And the busyness told the real story.

Busyness was his shield.

It kept the grief, and fear of an uncertain future, at bay.

If he just kept moving, maybe the silence and loneliness wouldn’t catch up.

Because when you sit in quiet stillness, the painful feelings, emotions, and thoughts ring more loudly in your mind and body.

And I recognised it immediately, because I’ve done the same.

When I lost my dad, or felt threatened at work, I filled every available minute.

Back-to-back meetings, errands, social commitments.

Anything to avoid the stillness and feel vulnerable. Because stillness felt risky.

That’s the Busy Bee burnout pattern trap: confusing motion with momentum.

When busyness is a resilience-blocking coping strategy

Through our therapeutic coaching, Jordan began to see that his busyness wasn’t resilience but avoidance.

Every new task offered a short-term relief from the deeper pain.

Going above and beyond with clients avoided potential conflict and further discomfort.

But it also held him back from changing anything.

He also believed if he wasn’t running at 110%, he was lazy.

Another unhelpful thought keeping him stuck.

The shift came when we tested his assumptions.

Instead of pre-empting what clients wanted from him, he tried asking.

He discovered they were fine with his suggestions, welcomed his boundaries, and didn’t expect endless travel to prove his value in person.

These small experiments gave him time and control over this work.

His anxiety subsided. Sleep and energy levels improved.

Decision-making was easier as he wasn’t as driven by fear and perceived threats.

Challenging a few assumptions cracked open space for curiosity. He began prioritising differently and built a working structure not based on blind panic.

This is one of the recovery themes I use with clients within my Adaptive Resilience System – Realistic Optimism and Reframing, using small mindset and behavioural shifts to update the meaning we give to events.

Why busyness feels safer than stillness

In psychology we call this tendency avoidance coping: filling time with activity to escape what feels painful or uncertain.

Research shows it works in the short term because action reduces cortisol, giving us momentary relief.

But long term, it stops us processing what’s driving our discomfort and deepens the cycle.

From a neuroscience perspective, our brains hate uncertainty. It’s energetically expensive to assess all possible options.

So, we choose action.

In one striking experiment, participants were left alone in a room with nothing but their thoughts.

The twist – they had a button they could press to give themselves mild electric shocks.

Many, especially men, chose to shock themselves rather than sit in silence.

Mumm, whut?

But it made sense. Busyness is the everyday version of that shock.

It feels easier to cram the calendar with stuff, than face grief, regret, failure, or uncertainty.

And for high performers, there’s another layer.

We often tie our identity to output and impact.

Worth comes from productivity. That we left something better than we found it.

When life feels shaky, over-activity reassures us: “I still matter because I’m still doing and achieving.”

That’s the Busy Bee trap: pseudo-certainty in the moment, at the cost of clarity and true satisfaction later.

McKinsey’s recent resilience research backs this up.

The most resilient leaders aren’t the ones who grind through every disruption, untouched like they’re Teflon.

They’re the ones who pause, reframe, and reimagine, letting challenges become catalysts for redesign, not excuses for busyness.

Do This: The Busy Bee Slow-down ARC

So how do you break the Busy Bee cycle and design your next chapter differently?

Here’s a practice to experiment with this week:

Awareness

Reflect on your week.

1. Notice where you’re keeping busy for relief vs. busy with purpose.

2. Write down one area where you’re piling on activity to avoid what you don’t want to feel or where you feel threatened.

Ditch the self-judgment here. It’s not about beating yourself up but noticing how you feel honestly.

Reconnection

Consider a new future.

1. Sketch a “week in the life” three months from now, either on paper or as a visualisation in your mind.

2. Note, what feels different? What isn’t cluttering your calendar just for the sake of it? What assumptions keep you stuck or rigid in your options?

Talking it through with a trusted friend or colleague can highlight any blind spots.

Containment

Narrow your focus.

1. Choose one small action this week that signals the new chapter.

2. It could be saying no to a non-essential task, blocking time for reflection, delegating, or trying something exploratory that isn’t about performance but curiosity.

This isn’t about doing less for the sake of it.

It’s about making space to choose differently and assessing the impact.

This week’s permission slip

Remember, you don’t have to earn your next chapter through sheer effort or force of nature.

You’re allowed to pause, draft it in pencil, and choose what matters before you get busy again.

Pablo Neruda’s poem, Keeping Quiet, reminds us to pause:

As writer Mary Oliver shared in Instructions for living a life:

“Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,

let’s not speak in any language;

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.”

Paulo Neruda

Pausing isn’t a sign of weakness, but self-leadership. A reset long enough to make the strategic choice.

Key takeaways

Busyness feels productive, energetic, and important, but it’s often avoidance.

Adaptability, which is at the heart of resilience, comes from space to reflect and design differently, and not purely from the grind of doing.

When you eventually stop, you might be hurtling down the wrong path, which is a real waste of precious focus and effort.

Stillness isn’t laziness. It’s where perspective returns and you challenge your perception, so the next chapter takes shape.

And sometimes it’s choosing what you won’t carry going forward.

I’ve lived this Busy Bee pattern myself. Keeping busy to dodge grief or workplace threats.

But real resilience came when I paused long enough to ask: what future am I actually choosing, and how can I best achieve it?

Don’t waste your time on avoiding pain and discomfort.

Stand still and design a next chapter you’ll be proud of.

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P.S. I talked about this recently on the Mindform podcast, including how burnout patterns like the Busy Bee keep us stuck. If you’d like to dig deeper, you can watch it here on YouTube: