Why Staying Busy Keeps You Stuck

Why do humans stay so busy instead of facing what’s actually wrong?

In this episode of The Human Experiment, Sharon unpacks one of the biggest contradictions of modern life: we have more tools, technology, automation, AI, apps, and systems than ever before… yet so many people feel more exhausted, overstimulated, and overwhelmed than ever. 

This episode is about the hidden role busyness plays in our lives and businesses.

Because sometimes busyness is not about productivity.

Sometimes it is protection.

A way to avoid stillness.
 A way to avoid hard truths.
 A way to avoid asking, am I actually happy?

Sharon explores how business owners can hide inside admin, emails, client work, checking, fixing, and overdelivering while the real issues stay untouched: pricing, confidence, boundaries, self-worth, leadership, and difficult conversations. 

In this episode we cover:
• Why humans stay busy instead of facing what feels uncomfortable
• How modern life rewards exhaustion and overcommitment
• Why busyness can become part of your identity
• The difference between productive action and emotional avoidance
• How business owners hide inside admin, emails, and client work
• Why knowing the problem intellectually is not the same as facing it emotionally
• How pricing, boundaries, confidence, and leadership often sit underneath “busy”
• Why stillness can feel confronting when you’re used to proving your worth through doing
• The role of alignment and the 20% that actually creates meaning, growth, and energy
• Sharon’s practical Human Experiment for noticing what busyness may be helping you avoid 

Key insights:
• Busyness can look responsible while quietly hiding what needs attention.
• Productivity and avoidance can look exactly the same from the outside.
• Stillness creates awareness, and awareness can feel confronting.
• Your worth is not measured by how exhausted you are.
• Sometimes the answer is not doing more — it is getting honest about what actually matters. 

Mentioned in this episode:
• Vipassana meditation 

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts
https://www.sharonfrancisco.com/podcast

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 Questions for the podcast? hello@sharonfrancisco.com

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👉  Also: The Entrepreneurial Bookkeeper — grow your business without sacrificing your health: sharonfrancisco.com/program

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook.

Have a question for the podcast? Email hello@sharonfrancisco.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Sharon Francisco Show. We continue the human experiments series, and this is episode four in this series. Today I am going to talk about why humans stay busy instead of facing what's actually going wrong or what's actually wrong. As I said, a while ago, I wrote a book about irrational human behavior. And ever since then, I haven't been able to stop noticing strange contradictions humans live inside of every day. And this one feels like one of the biggest. I tell you, how often do you hear people say, I'm so busy? So why do humans stay so busy instead of facing what's really actually wrong? Because modern humans are exhausted. Everyone we talk to is exhausted. They're burnt out, they're overstimulated, they're overcommitted, they're constantly rushing, constantly on doing. And yet somehow, even with all the technology designed to save us time, humans seem more overwhelmed than ever. I know you know this because we talk to each other all the time about how busy we are. We see it in Facebook groups, in everywhere, when we're having conversations at the gym. Yeah, I'm busy, it's busy, it's busy. We've got dishwashers, we've got microwaves, we've got phones, we've got automation, we've got AI to write our emails, we've got apps, we've got calendars, we've got systems. Everything was supposedly meant to make life easier. And yet, humans still seem frantic, which makes me wonder are humans actually busy because life is demanding? Or are many humans staying busy because stillness might tell a little truth? And I noticed this in myself too. I obviously have used busyness to avoid emotionally uncomfortable things previously. Work harder, organize something, clean something. Well, not clean. I've never cleaned, I don't like cleaning. That's a whole other subject, but you need to get a cleaner. If you own a business, get another client and get a cleaner. Answer emails, focus on everyone else, anything except sitting quietly long enough to ask, am I actually happy? Aren't humans fascinating? Busyness often looks more socially acceptable than struggling. One thing I keep noticing is humans often use busyness to create the appearance that life is under control. And especially us women. As though, as if everything externally looks together, then internally we we're okay too. But honestly, that logic has never really worked for me. Because humans can have spotless kitchens and chaotic in the lives. Humans can look incredibly productive while quietly avoiding massive truths. And I think modern culture rewards this kind of stuff because busy humans look responsible. They even look useful, driven, and important. Meanwhile, stillness can almost look a little bit lazy, but psychologically, avoidance often hides the inside busyness. Researchers studying emotional avoidance and productivity have found humans often overwork to temporarily escape anxiety, uncertainty, loneliness, or dissatisfaction. Because movement creates distraction, stillness creates awareness, and awareness can feel very, very confronting. Humans have turned stress into an identity. This part fascinates me too. Humans almost wear stress like a badge of honor now. I'm flood out. Yeah, I'm exhausted. Yeah, I haven't stopped. I haven't had a holiday for years. And weirdly, those statements almost sound socially impressive, as though exhaustion somehow proves our worthiness. And I know this is not conscious, guys. This is all subconscious, which honestly says a lot about our modern culture. Because somewhere along the way, humans started linking self-worth to productivity. And identity plays a huge role in this. Who are we if we actually stop? That question alone probably explains a huge amount of human behavior. Because if your identity has become a helper, achiever, a provider, a worker, a problem solver, slowing down can then actually feel psychologically threatening, especially if we own a business and we're doing all those things like providing and working and problem solver and helper. There's actually research around this from behavior psychology. Humans build identities through repeated behavior. So if somebody has spent years proving their worth through doing, achieving, helping, fixing, surviving, then stillness can create an identity crisis. And honestly, I think this is why some humans panic on holidays or feel uncomfortable resting or suddenly feel emotional when life finally quietens down. They don't call it Sunday scaries for nothing because underneath the noise, there's usually something waiting. Humans are so fascinating. Productivity and avoidance can look identical. This is the dangerous part. Productive and emotional avoidant can sometimes look exactly the same externally. Both humans are busy, both humans are working, both humans are getting things done. But internally, completely different things are going on. One is intentionally building, the other is hiding. And business owners especially can disappear into this. I see this constantly. More admin, more checking, more emails, more client work, more tasks. Meanwhile, the real issue quietly sits untouched. Pricing, confidence, boundaries, self-worth, leadership, fear, avoiding difficult conversations, avoiding growth. I once spoke with a bookkeeper who was charging $45 an hour for her work, and she had a contractor she was paying $60 an hour to. And she kept saying, I know, I know. But somehow the truth wasn't fully landing emotionally, because humans can intellectually know something while still emotionally avoiding it. And this is like, I know I've I've mentioned this lady I spoke to, but this is a lot of the times I see this. And it might not be as obvious as that. It might be in scope creep where you're doing more work and not charging for it, or even if you're doing the work and you add it up and you look at the invoice, you go, I can't charge that. And you scrape off a few hours just to make it look a little bit more responsible or reasonable. So because humans can intellectually know something while still emotionally avoiding it, that's such an important distinction. Knowledge alone doesn't change us. If we, if again, I always say this: if you want to know how to grow and scale a business, go and read the e-myth. It's all there. There's so much information out there. But knowledge alone doesn't change humans. Awareness does. And often awareness only comes when humans finally slow down enough to hear themselves properly. Modern humans are distracted from themselves constantly. I honestly think humans now live in one of the most distracted periods in history. We've got phones, we've got notifications, we're streaming, social media, emails, podcasts, content, noise. Think about the amount of ways people can contact you. You've got messenger, you've got text, you've got WhatsApp, you've got all these different modalities that people can actually connect with you. And it's overwhelming. Humans barely spend any time alone with their own thoughts anymore. And yet, almost every philosopher, spiritual teacher, psychologist circles back to the same idea eventually. Know yourself. Joseph Campbell, the amazing philosopher that I do talk about a lot, spoke about the call to adventure, the idea that humans eventually feel pulled towards becoming more fully themselves. And I think that's what so much anxiety actually is sometimes a disconnect between who humans truly are and who they're performing as. Because deep down, humans know. They know when something feels off, they know when they're exhausted, they know when they're avoiding, they know when they've outgrown something, and they know when they're living for approval. Staying busy delays that confrontation temporarily. So what if the goal isn't more? The more I observe humans, the more I wonder if the goal was ever actually more. Maybe the goal is alignment. Maybe humans don't need to do 80% of the things they're doing. Maybe they need to identify the 20% that feels meaningful to create growth, to build confidence, creating income, feeling energized, and stop performing worthiness through exhaustion. I noticed this massively in myself. For years, I think I was doing many things because I thought they proved I was hardworking, and because of that, I was valued. Then slowly something shifted for me, and I started understanding my actual value, what I could genuinely contribute, what felt aligned. Humans often need somebody they respect to help them see themselves more clearly. And definitely, this has been a couple of things for me. Um, definitely through doing work with Jane Anderson through personal branding and something that I did in 2014, which was I felt pretty normal, but I've been told since it's pretty out there. I went and did a vipassana meditation. Vipassana meditation is all around the world. Uh, you can Google it, I'll put it in the show notes. It's a 10-day silent meditation where you meditate from 12 to 14 hours a day. You don't look anyone in the eyes the whole time in the 10 days, and you don't speak for 10 days. And the silent meditation is meant to do just what I've spoken about, to start getting you in touch with your with yourself and understanding what your quiet thoughts are and what comes up. Um, it's it was very, very transformative for me. And I encourage you to look into it. It's actually free to attend. You can just donate what you feel you can afford. Uh, there's accommodation, men stay on one side and the women stay on another. It's in a dorm type facility, and all the food is vegetarian, beautiful, beautiful vegetarian food. And I'm not a vegetarian and I loved it. So humans often need somebody they respect to help them see themselves more clearly. And that's what I did. I decided to do for Parson. And of course, I talk a lot about Jane Anderson and the transformative work that she does because sometimes we can't see our own patterns while we're trapped inside them. And maybe that's where the real work is: not becoming busier, but becoming more honest with yourself. So today's human experiment. I do encourage you to look into Vipassana meditation, silent meditation. It is amazing. The people that run it are very, very lovely people and it transforms you into. I still to this day um have the effects of that. And um, it's it's incredible. But this one is not as big as the Vipassana, so you can give this one a go. Um, I want you to sit somewhere quietly for 20 minutes this week. No phone, so put your phone somewhere away, turn it right off. No cleaning, no multitasking, no music, no productivity, just you alone with your thoughts, just for 20 minutes, not 10 days, just for 20 minutes, and ask yourself one uncomfortable question. What might I be staying busy to avoid? What might I be staying busy to avoid? Then write down every answer honestly, not the polished answer, the real one. Nobody needs to see this. And after that, ask yourself, what are the 20% of the things that genuinely make me feel alive, useful, peaceful, or growing? What if humans don't actually need to do more? What if they need to stop abandoning themselves underneath all that darn noise? And honestly, maybe that's the real experiment. Hopefully, that's been helpful today. Um, I will do an episode on Vipassana because there's so much more to it than I just talked about now. If you're interested, please feel free to reach out, Sharon at Sharonfrancisco.com. Uh, thank you so much. Until next time, talk to you soon. Bye.