Why Do I Feel Guilty When It’s Not Busy At Work?

On Wednesday, I was enjoying some time scrolling on social media when I came across a post from a 24-year-old gal that was gaining some traction. The topic caught my attention.

The essence of the post was: ‘Why do I feel guilty when it’s not busy at work?’

I’ve recently had a similar discussion with someone close to me - full of aspirations, driven, committed, and yet questioning why they feel bad after a day or two of a slower pace at work. They wondered if something was wrong with them. Would anyone comment on it? Could this lead to being labeled as underperforming, or might someone come over to nudge them?

Many people have been fortunate to receive an education that instills confidence and assurance, eliminating such fears or anxieties. However, many others have grown up in societies where the education system and societal models have unconsciously built these kinds of fears.

Many of us, as hyper-achievers, often judge ourselves based on constant performance and achievements, associating any inactivity with something negative.

Often, when we experience these fears, we don’t know how to help ourselves.

We lack the skills (for now) to speak up, ask for feedback or advice, or even ask around if feeling this way is normal.

But usually, all we need is some form of validation from an authority figure (often our boss in an employment relationship) to reassure us - to say, ‘Hey, it’s okay! You’re okay! Nobody will fire you’. Ideally, they’d also need to read our minds and offer this reassurance without us having to ask, as a direct conversation might make us feel even worse.

So today, if you’re experiencing these feelings or are at the beginning of your career journey, I want to offer you that validation.

Why should my validation matter? It doesn't, unless you decide it does. All I can say is that jumping from individual contributor to a management role and being close to people and my team has allowed me to learn, grow, and understand myself better, and to acknowledge that humans do human things. As a recovering hyper achiever myself, I've built my confidence to openly discuss these human issues without fluff and BS, stemming from my own struggle to find this sort of information when I was grappling with what was happening to me, my anxieties, and my work ethic, so I can help others discover these aspects and recover more quickly.

If you're curious, here’s what I can tell you about this type of guilt.

1. You are a good person.

I don’t know you, but if you are experiencing these types of feelings and projecting them onto mine, my friends’, and those of people I know who have also experienced them, chances are you feel guilty as a result of your character and the way you were raised.

You have likely been raised with principles that led you to these associations:

It is not okay to be paid for doing nothing.
Taking advantage of someone or something that has placed trust in you is not okay.
Being responsible means always working towards your goals.
If you aren’t constantly producing, your reputation will be affected, and you’ll be seen as a slacker.

What these beliefs, in fact, lead to is your underlying problem or fear: that your actions (e.g., taking a few hours or a day to breathe) will affect how others see you — that you are doing something wrong, bad, and will be judged as lazy, irresponsible, or incompetent.

What you fear is that someone will ‘punish’ you — and you won’t receive the appreciation and validation you need anymore.

The idea that you might be let go or fired is more of a side feeling; what you fear most is that moment when someone will come to you and say something about it.

What happens with you - and if you take a moment to dig deep inside you’ll recognise it - is that you depend on your performance and achievements, and on being acknowledged for them by external sources, to respect and validate yourself.

The opposite — not having the acknowledgment of great performance and achievement — leads to a lack of validation, which triggers anxiety because that’s your fuel.

The reality is that many of us, employees, work and have some sort of fears motivating us. We are not machines; people have feelings.

I don’t know all the cultures in this world, but I do know that there are large cultures that, without even realizing it, raise children with a significant need for external validation.

The fact that you feel this way is not because you are doing something wrong, but because you associate your feelings with something wrong. You are a good person.

2. You are not the only one.

I remember years ago, when I was working closely and in direct communication with customers, feeling this sort of anxiety for the first time.

My job was very intensive and reactive — the idea of even finding a moment to pay a personal bill during work hours seemed exotic. My brain and my entire dynamic were trained to be active and engaged almost every moment. However, occasionally, either during the holiday season when our customers were less active and engaged, or when the situation unexpectedly became less tense, I would experience it.

Throughout your career, depending on the industry, you’ll notice that the business year comes with the adrenaline rush of meeting all targets in waves.

For every slow period there’s a busy one, it’s the flow of any business.

But years ago, I was not yet familiar with these fluctuations, and even the slightest change in the dynamic of my role that resulted in less work volume triggered guilt and made me question whether I was doing something wrong. And it seemed likely that someone would soon comment on it.

If you are reading these lines and they don’t resonate with you — if they rather make you laugh because most of your days at work are chill and relaxed and you even embrace the quiet quitting culture — then that’s great, but it means this note is not intended for you. Sorry, friend, I don’t want to waste your time. However, if this does resonate with you, then please stay with me.

The strangest thing is that this sort of guilt kicks in immediately — chances are, even if you have few hours in a day that are not as busy as your ‘normal,’ you will start to feel guilty.

If you experience a day that feels slower or lazier, you will definitely feel some anxiety.

If this happens for several days in a row, you will start to really question yourself.

So, here’s what I learned: there are two types of people.

People like you and me, who feel guilty after just three hours of not being busy and worry that someone will come after us, tell us we are not performing and let us go, and people who really struggle and don’t perform well regularly.

The fact that you take a few hours to breathe has nothing to do with your performance — in fact, it does, but not in the negative way you associate it with. You are fine; what you’re experiencing is, most likely, the next point.

3. You might be a hyper-achiever and associate being busy with your self-worth.

It’s common to feel guilty when you’re not too busy at work, as you often associate being productive with being valuable.

When we’re not too busy, we may feel like we’re not contributing enough.

In fact, you have trained your brain to constantly deliver one thing after another, likely running at 200km/h, and when you slow down to 160km/h, you feel that something is wrong.

But most likely, even at 160km/h, even with 4 hours when you haven’t done much in a day, or a day in a week where you haven’t produced much, remember that you’re still likely producing much more than most people.

For us hyper-achievers, it’s challenging to experience a profound sense of satisfaction and peace. Even when we mark all tasks as done, we still feel that something is missing, and we need to go hunting again for more, keep ourselves busy again, and start a spiral.

But remember, you do enough, and you are enough. You might even outperform your entire team or several peers when you kick in your hyper-achieving engines.

There are multiple aspects your manager will consider to evaluate if you are underperforming, and I’ve never seen anyone become one overnight or after a slow day or two.

Plus, don’t forget, you have been running for days, weeks, months; taking a moment to drink some water is a basic necessity.

Instead of worrying about not having accomplished much during a quiet period, try using that time and have an honest conversation with yourself and evaluate if your working rhythm is sustainable or if it’s something that should be adjusted to indeed deliver at a high level, and for a long period of time.

You are enough.

4. All the productivity hacks you read about only add more pressure.

In today’s lifestyle, we tend to put more pressure on ourselves to accomplish more, eventually in less time, and thus produce more.

This pressure is something we give ourselves at an individual level, but it’s also a movement in our society, extending to companies as well.

We grow up believing that we should be more productive.

The reality is that things have been changing.

I remember when I joined the workforce — people would alt-tab all day, playing video games in the office (some still do ;)), customer demands were not at this level, a minute had 60 seconds, and it was totally acceptable to complete a simple task in a week.

And even then, people experienced anxiety, stress, and a feeling of being rushed or overwhelmed.

But somehow, we, the people who felt rushed years ago when we had a week to complete a simple task, have trained our brains to become more productive, and to do the same task in 15 minutes today.

As a result, yes, we do more, and we are always in the hunt for more, but personally, I don’t see how this is sustainable.

In my mind, there are two possibilities when it comes to long-term solutions for this crisis:

Companies start increasing their IQ levels and become more conscious of the fact that this pace is not sustainable, and really become genuine about work-life balance. This is where I’d encourage you also to work on yourself to recalibrate how you see your work culture and shift into being a high performer (rather than hyper).
Companies will continue to ignore this crisis and choose to work mainly with young employees who come with a lot of energy and a desire to hustle, not realizing that it won’t serve them in the long term. Those who understand that hyper-delivering is not sustainable, and that companies won’t provide a context for them, will pivot and take other, less traditional paths to earn their living and find career fulfillment.

Hyper-productivity and hyper-achievement are like an unstoppable boost at the beginning of your career. You feel unstoppable, living and breathing that adrenaline.

Until you don’t.

The sooner you learn this, the better for your mind and body long term.

5. There are no two days or two weeks that are exactly the same.

What is considered ‘the best’ can differ from one day to another.

However, the unwritten expectation, in most cases, is that you are expected to deliver consistently, day in and day out.

My rule of thumb is:

On 10%-20% of days, you’ll feel motivated, energized, absolutely brilliant, and crush everything you touch.
On another 10%-20% of days, you will feel awful. You will feel like hiding in a corner, wishing everything on your plate would disappear; you’ll experience a lack of motivation, and you won’t want to talk to anyone while your calendar piles up with meetings. You are mentally exhausted.
On 10% of days, you will not feel okay health-wise. Similar to the above, you want to curl up, but this time because your body says ‘no’. And without going into a sensitive topic, as it’s too delicate for some to handle, a woman can experience PMS for even 14 days in a month.
On 50%-70% of your time, you’ll feel average and produce average results.

My suggestion is to maximize those 50%-70% average days. Make the best out of them. As much as you can. Everyone can be exceptional one day and feel ill or low on another. In most of your days, the 50%-70% of your time, that’s your bulk where you should strive to make your average a great average.

The next time you encounter a day when you feel a bit less motivated, or you find yourself in a position to take a moment and breathe during a chill week, remember that you likely need that break anyway. It's probable you are experiencing a period between bullet 2 and 3.

Even top-tier performers will have days when they won’t be feeling it. It is ok.

In fact, allowing yourself a slow day or two is what can actually make your high achievement possible in the other days.

So what can you do?

So, what can you do on those days when guilt piles up, you still want to do something but you’re not feeling up to crushing it on your project, or your tasks might be less voluminous that day?

Here are my few suggestions:

Before anything else (and I’ll probably make the optimistic assumption that you have a great manager and a safe working environment), if you feel that you can’t really overcome these anxious, guilty feelings and you still believe that someone will come to nudge you on a low day, have a chat with your manager. Be open about how you feel and seek that validation; ask them to evaluate how they perceive a situation where you’ve had a slow day or week. My experience tells me that any good leader will share their own experiences and feelings, as well as their strategies for similar situations. We all have this sort of days. Not everyone will admit it :)
Look at that day as a great opportunity to recharge your mind and energy while still staying plugged into emails and handling one-off requests or what’s super duper important at your job. Accept it as a reward for the hard work you’re doing most of the time.
Tackle some easy administrative work that you’ve been procrastinating on for a long time to still feel productive while keeping your mind at a low engagement level. Every job has some sort of administrative work that we never find the time and energy for. What I most often do is revisit documentation, update things that are no longer accurate, and ensure that I clean up all the decks, files, excels, and other stuff I’ve piled up, organizing them in a more structured way.
Engage in some less intensive training or a course, a webinar. Read something that would benefit your job and spend the time investing in yourself.
Write an internal article or a blog post if your company offers something like that, or document a learning experience and share it with your team.
Some just take a 15 mins nap.

As a closing note, all I can say is, don’t feel bad; you are not alone. Don't be afraid to admit or talk that this sort of days exist.

That's it for this note, I'll see you next week.

-Luciana