The CEO Addiction To Busyness

Busyness isn’t just a behavior—it’s become a badge of honor and a hidden addiction that’s slowly eroding leadership effectiveness. It started as a conversation among peers—six senior leaders from different backgrounds who faced similar career struggles (Astronaut, NYT best-selling author, Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For CEO, Pharmaceutical Executive, USA Today Top 10 Workplace Executive, and Entrepreneur), and now we’re all grappling with the same unsettling reality as we work with leaders.

No matter how much we accomplished early in our careers, the sense of urgency, the endless stream of demands, and the pressure to stay on top never seemed to end. We had each seen it in ourselves and in the executives we led, coached and mentored: leaders stretched thin, overwhelmed by responsibilities, and yet unable to escape the cycle. We weren’t alone. But we also know from experience there are solutions.

While the modern work environment has shifted on its axis, a great many leaders have struggled. Some are effectively drowning. Research confirmed what we were experiencing. The American Psychological Association lists stress as the leading cause of executive burnout. The Mayo Clinic ties chronic stress to cardiovascular disease and anxiety disorders. Deloitte found that 81% of C-suite leaders have experienced burnout, with a staggering 96% reporting a decline in mental health. Worse still, 70% of executives actively contemplate resignation.

How Did We Get Here?

The numbers paint a dire picture, but the personal stories were even more telling. We had seen brilliant, capable leaders fall into cycles of exhaustion, despair, disengagement, and even physical decline. What struck us most was that for many, the problem wasn’t just external pressures—it was a kind of addiction. An addiction to busyness.

We live in an era of unprecedented information flow—“connected” in a way unlike any in human history. Our world is dominated by data, and so is our time.  As the business landscape transforms, leaders are expected to anticipate change and respond with agility—simultaneously assessing a deluge of inputs while making real time decisions that determine team success.

The argument can be made that in this era of connectedness a great many are more isolated than ever from a tribe of any sort. The plight of today’s leader is being busy, and it’s taking precedence over legitimate productivity while contributing to an illusion of control. The leaders today are not okay.

The Root of the Problem:

• The overwhelmed, overworked and overstressed leader is real—and the dilemma is worsening.

• The impact on company productivity, and on individual happiness and career contentment, is profound.

• Though there are a myriad of reasons for the predicament, we posit that much of the problem is, at least in part, self-inflicted.

• Every leader who finds it hard to take a day off or actually enjoy a vacation—or who invests weekends in front of a laptop instead of with family or struggles with health and stress related symptoms—might find themselves agreeing that the “urge” is bringing about substantial harm.

The Leadership Impact Table

The Dichotomy

For high-achieving professionals, busyness has become a performance drug—a badge of honor that masks fatigue, disconnection and diminishing returns. Many leaders have been conditioned to equate productivity with self-worth. Being in constant motion—juggling meetings, responding to emails at all hours, squeezing in one more task—feels like proof of our value. But this relentless pace comes at a cost.

Consider the executive who takes pride in working late into the night, convinced that the company cannot function without input on every project nuance and tactical decision. Or the leader who reflexively checks their phone during dinner with the family, unable to resist the dopamine hit of “keeping up.” These behaviors aren’t just about dedication—they are symptoms of a deeper issue.

This work addiction manifests in several ways:

• Cultural Reinforcement: Many organizations reward overwork, celebrating those who sacrifice personal time for the company.
• The Fear of Falling Behind: With the pace of business accelerating, executives worry that slowing down means obsolescence, irrelevance and displacement.
• The Illusion of Productivity: Constant activity feels like progress, but often, it’s just activity without real impact.
• Hardwired Reinforcement: Busyness triggers dopamine and endorphins, creating a “high” that can mask exhaustion and inefficiency.
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): The belief that we must stay connected at all times to remain visible and relevant.

Ironically, the very qualities that make leaders successful—drive, discipline, commitment—can also make them vulnerable to this destructive cycle.

And the destruction extends to others. The overwhelmed leader often fails to consistently address the needs of employees on the team. That deficit leads to employee disengagement. The most recent Gallup report on the state of the global workplace found that employee engagement declined in 2024 for only the second time in the past 12 years. Now confronted with even more disengaged employees, the already overwhelmed leaders become…even more overwhelmed.  This self-reinforcing, causal relationship—the overwhelmed leader causing employee disengagement, which causes the leader to become even more overwhelmed—is a very real predicament for many leaders today.

The Detox Plan

If busyness is an addiction, then recovery requires both individual and systemic change. Through our collective experience, we developed a two-pronged approach for individual and organizational assessment and planning to help leaders reclaim control, restore balance, and drive real productivity—not just motion.

The leader’s natural knee-jerk response is to take action. But what we really need to do is take a lesson from the great thinkers like Einstein and DaVinci, and that is to do something that requires incredible discipline: Nothing.

You have to slow down to speed up.

Inspired by singer-songwriter Harry Chapin’s reflection on life and purpose, there are two kinds of tired: “There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” Bad tired is the kind that comes from chasing someone else’s dream, living out of alignment with your values, or simply running on the hamster wheel of busy without meaning. Good tired is different. It’s the kind of exhaustion you feel after doing work that matters—work aligned with your purpose, where even the effort itself feels like fulfillment. The goal isn’t to eliminate tiredness, but rather to ensure that, at the end of the day, we’re the kind of tired that lets us rest easy.

There are two forces at play here. One is the individual. The other is the system.

With regard to the individual, and the human need to wrest control when possible, we must remember we only control two things: where we spend our time and how we respond in our environment—i.e., how we interact with others. What’s required from individuals to perform at a higher level is the same thing that’s required of the system—discipline.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

The first and hardest step is admitting that busyness is not the same as effectiveness. Leaders must ask themselves:

• What truly matters to me—professionally and personally? What do I hold dear? What are my values?
• How am I investing my time, and does it align with the answers to the question above?
• What are the costs, to me and to others, of maintaining my current pace, and not adapting?

A simple time audit—use a 5-day log to track how you spend every 30 minutes—often reveals a sobering reality. Too much time in unnecessary meetings. Too many distractions. Not enough time for deep work, strategic thinking or self-care.

Step 2: Identify the Root Causes

Leaders must pinpoint the factors driving their busyness. Common culprits include:

• Information overload: Too many emails, meetings and data inputs (analysis paralysis).
• Not identifying the process and criteria by which decisions will be made.
• Lack of prioritization: Everything feels urgent, but not everything is important.
• Not holding sacred important but not urgent priorities in the calendar.
• Poor delegation: Leaders holding onto tasks that should be owned by others.
• Cultural expectations: An unspoken belief that constant availability equals true commitment.

By identifying these issues, leaders can begin designing a better approach to where they need to invest their time.

Step 3: Redefine Productivity and Performance

Effective leaders don’t just work harder—they work smarter. This means:

• Setting clear boundaries: defining working hours, unplugging after key times, and enforcing “no email” periods.
• Reprioritizing work: focusing on impact rather than activity.
• Delegating strategically: empowering others to own responsibilities, reducing executive bottlenecks.
• Challenging meeting culture: instituting clear agendas, reducing unnecessary check-ins, and canceling meetings that don’t drive results.

One executive we worked with slashed his meeting load by 40% simply by questioning whether his presence was truly necessary. The result? More time for strategic thinking, fewer reactive decisions, and a healthier work-life balance.

Step 4: Track Progress and Make Adjustments

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Leaders should set milestones to measure their progress:

• Are they spending more time on high-value work that produces the greatest return on time, energy and dollars?
• Are they feeling more engaged and less overwhelmed? What about others in your circle?
• Can they step away without disruption—trusting the system and people in place?

Short-term wins—like carving out uninterrupted time for strategic thinking or taking a full weekend off—build momentum for long-term change.

The system is what influences the environment – how people, en masse, behave. You see, we need a two-pronged approach  to stop the madness. We need individuals to take personal responsibility—and organizations to design environments that enable people to thrive. It’s adjusting the right levers for the system to enhance structure, processes, people and incentives.

Embed a Sustainable Culture of Smart Work

For true transformation, companies must shift their definition of success. Instead of glorifying long hours, they should recognize and reward effective performance – which is a combination of results and behaviors aligned with the organization’s core values. Leaders can reinforce this by:

• Modeling better habits—leaving the office at a reasonable hour, taking real vacations, and showing that work-life harmony is possible.
• Encouraging open conversations about what’s working, what’s not, and suggestions for better performance. People support what they help create.
• Open dialogue regarding the duty to others, the duty to self (e.g., mental health), and the duty to provide more value than you cost to the organization.
• Instituting organizational policies that prevent overwork from being the norm.

One company that implemented these changes saw a 30% increase in productivity—not from working longer, but from working better.

The Hard Truth: Change Is a Choice

The addiction to busyness is real. But like any addiction, recovery begins with a decision.

Our hope is that what we outlined above starts the conversation and acknowledgement of the problem and its effects, and creates the catalyst for insight on how to affect recovery.

We’ve seen leaders who once believed they had no choice but to be constantly busy reclaim their time, energy, and focus. They lead more effectively, make better decisions, and build stronger teams—all while living healthier, more fulfilling lives.

The alternative? Staying trapped in the cycle. Overwork. Stress. Burnout. Declining health. Damaged relationships.

We challenge every leader to ask two simple but profound questions:

1. Am I willing to exercise discipline over my calendar and invest my time where it truly matters?
2. Will that investment make a lasting difference—to others, and to the performance of my organization?

Because if busyness is an addiction, then discipline is the antidote—and our decisions will define our legacy.