Trapped In The Cult Of 'Being Busy'? Here's Why Doing Less Might Actually Make You Happier

When Vikram Dhar recently felt like ditching his screaming schedules and screens, he headed straight to his roots in the mountains. Stretched ahead were seven days free of agendas, just chants etching across the hush of monasteries. The stillness stirred in him something familiar: the joy of truly ‘being,’ not ‘doing.’

“As a mountain boy at heart, I find the rhythm of city life both thrilling and draining,” says the international neuro-language programming (NLP) Master Coach and founder of the NLP Coaching Academy. “Like many, career and education pulled me into the urban culture, where being ‘busy’ is worn like a badge of honour and exhaustion celebrated as a proof of achievement.”

Worshipping the hustle

That highlights a dire irony of our time: a breathless pursuit of exclusivity leaving us overwhelmed, and not just at the workplace. True, jobs are a deity hungry for tributes at all hours. But then staying on top of emails, social posts and WhatsApp messages — lurking like obstinate mosquitoes even while we are catching precious Zs — has become life-critical. Endless scrolling or binge-watching shows late into the night is a bragging feat. Like overzealous sheepdogs, we are busy shuttling our children between unceasing activities when we ourselves are not picking up a new language or fitness regimen. Our vacations are so action-packed that they can make even an Olympic triathlon break into a sweat.

With timetables denser than neutron stars, trading sleep for hustle, leisure for sundry devices, and sanity for the dopamine of nonstop online presence has come at a grim price — exhaustion. More than life becoming a high-wire act, what is disconcerting is how we are turning fatigue into an endurance sport and “busyness” into a measure of our worth.

Fatigue fallout

Amanpreet Sodhi, a 29-year-old tech professional from Gurugram, remembers priding himself on his five-minute showers, bean-bag crash-outs and killer deadlines until a panic attack during a client meeting forced him to seek therapy. He has since learnt to say no. “My firm can survive without me; I had just forgotten how to,” he quips.

Priya Mehta, a Mumbai-based marketer once famous for her “rise-and-grind” social posts about all-nighters and 4:00am workouts, relished being called a superwoman who never sleeps. That changed when her worried dad asked if she was there to impress others or live a real life. She is grateful she made her weekends about her plants than pitches. “I am no less valued at work but far livelier,” she enthuses.

Few may notice, but we are drained. And every escape in the name of work, family, social or leisure obligations only worsens things because it is always about catching up than letting go. Deep inside the cultural shift of passing off exhaustion as a sign of success, even a status currency, is the push to “do more” in a bid to belong better.

Burnout by design

Senior consultant psychiatrist Dr. Sanjay Chugh avers that exhaustion and “busyness” are being valorised today. “Human beings are programmed to use immature and neurotic defence mechanisms during a conflict,” he says. “In this conflict too, we tend to rationalise and intellectualise.”

Much of this emanates from skewed notions of productivity. “That ‘I have a lot to do’ is tied to the idea of productivity that hyper-capitalism sells us,” says filmmaker and columnist Paromita Vohra. “This global neoliberal system says if work isn’t your passion, you’re just a cog in the wheel, unworthy of reward. The problem lies in thinking that not subsuming your identity with your job means you lack ambition, and the only ambition worth having is of rising on the ladder.”

“Only modern human beings are in a rush to crush the 'present' in the hope of a 'future',” says Kamlesh Jain, founder of The Attention Institute, Mumbai, that has taught more than 200,000 people over the last 14 years to cultivate focus in a distracted world. “People have lost focus completely and being busy is becoming a pandemic. What they don’t realise is that a distracted mind is always tired, busy and chaotic with fatigue.”

Running on empty

Studies show that the less energy people think they have, the more depressed they feel. A study carried out last year in India reported that telehealth consultations and urban clinic visits for lifestyle-related mental health issues such as exhaustion surged by a whopping 45% between 2022 and 2024. In another study of more than 4,200 emotional wellness consultations across five companies, 59% of employees showed signs of moderate to severe anxiety and nearly half reported insufficient sleep—a key indicator of exhaustion.

The gap between effort and reward may not be new, but the extent of insecurity bred by that gap most definitely is. That leaves us pushing, running, striving even harder. “Today’s fatigue stems from having to constantly justify your validity in a system that offers no care and leaves you to fend for yourself,” says Vohra. “This system tells you everybody is your competition. It is exhausting to be forever vigilant and continuously struggle to exist.”

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Reclaiming the pause

That explains why exhaustion is becoming a key driver of India’s wellness market. Wellness retreats and clinics are witnessing a 40-50% jump in inquiries for therapies targeting exhaustion and stress, that too from a much broader demographic aged 16 to 65. Unstructured, tech-free stays at minimalist, complete-silence retreats are gaining popularity.

Far from being a trophy, exhaustion is a wake-up call. Neither the admiration nor the sympathy we expect it to fetch us is worth the price. “If you’re burning the candle at both ends, you’re not winning—you’re just cutting yourself off at your own ankles,” Dr. Chugh says. Dhar warns against losing oneself to achieve something great. “If we equate burnout with success, and busyness with self-worth, we lose something important: ourselves,” he says. “The most meaningful successes are those where you are fully present to enjoy them.” Indeed, true achievements should feel more like peace than exhaustion.