The Busy Fool Trap: Why More Work Is Rarely Better

There is a version of business ownership that still gets praised far too easily.

Being busy. Are you busy? Great! Oh, I’m so busy. We love the word busy, wear the busy badge with pride, when really, who started a business to be busy?

Treating the diary like Tetris, constantly adding to that endless task list. Then there’s the switching roles from sales to operations to finance to HR to delivery and back again without stopping for breath.

From the outside, it can look impressive, like things are clearly going well. And they might well be… but for the human, it often just feels relentless.

That was what made this conversation with John Lamerton so useful. His “one thing” was deceptively simple: focus on one thing. But what he unpacked around that idea was much more important than a neat productivity lesson. It was about identity, pressure, health, control, and the difference between doing lots of things and doing intentional things that move a business forward.

For growing businesses, especially those with a small team, that distinction matters a lot, so we’ve captured the best insights from our conversation and popped them all here neatly for you. Enjoy.

Lesson 1: Busyness can look like progress for a very long time

John described a working day where whatever shouted loudest got done. PR for one business, then SEO for another. Team meetings, handbooks, bookkeeping, accounts. A constant swing between roles, responsibilities and opportunities.

This is relatable for a lot of owner-managed businesses, but it’s often a case of mistaken identity. Seeing activity as effectiveness when it’s really not.

In the early stages, being willing to do everything can help get a business off the ground. The problem comes when that same behaviour becomes the operating model long after the business has outgrown it.

A full day does not always equal a valuable day. A busy founder does not automatically mean a focused business.

Practical takeaway: Write down what filled your last five working days. Then mark which tasks genuinely moved the business forward, which could have been delegated, and which probably should not have been done at all.

Lesson 2: The warning signs are usually there long before the wake-up call

John ended up in the hospital in his twenties, being told he was headed straight for an early grave. But looking back, the signs were there well before that.

Snapping at people he shouldn't have snapped at. Working late into the evening. Saying no to things he usually enjoyed. Relying on caffeine just to keep going. The business was still doing well, but the cost was eating away at John underneath.

When your business expands and starts to include a team, you still feel essential to everything, but the complexity has grown to the point where you're permanently overloaded. And when that happens, the first things to suffer are usually the ones that matter most: sleep, thinking time, good decisions, and the people around you.

Practical takeaway: Notice what gets squeezed out first when things get busy. Those are your warning signs.

Lesson 3: The real shift is often subtraction, not addition

As our business grows and there are more things to do, we add more and more to our plate, more meetings, longer days and just one more late night. Then we treat the overwhelm that inevitably creeps in with time-saving tools, like an app, tool or another planner.

John’s answer was the opposite: subtraction.

He described sitting down and writing out everything he thought he had to do, then sorting it into buckets: things only he could do, things someone else could do, and things that maybe did not need doing at all.

That last category is the one most of us struggle with, telling ourselves, “But everything needs doing!” Only… it doesn’t.

Practical takeaway: Sit down with your task list and choose just one task that could be ditched and one to delegate.

Lesson 4: Capture ideas, but don’t let them hijack the day

Founders tend to generate new ideas constantly, which can be great… but also very distracting.

John had a great distinction between ideas and priorities.

He was very clear that ideas still matter, they just don’t all deserve immediate execution, or in some cases, any execution!

Without a system, every new idea arrives dressed up as both brilliant and urgent.

The better approach is to capture it, then carry on with the one thing that matters today. Often, when you revisit your ideas, you realise half of them were a bit rubbish, and ditch them.

For those that are good, you realise not all of them belong in this week’s workload, and you can sensibly plan them for when the time is right.

Practical takeaway: Create one place for “could do” ideas. Not ten places, just one. Then every time you have a brilliant idea, get it out of your head, store it properly, and return to your current priority.

Lesson 5: Ambition works better when it has boundaries

For a long time, business culture has treated ambition and lifestyle as opposites. Either you want growth, or you want free time, hobbies and a nice life. Either you are serious, or you are protecting your time.

But this isn’t a particularly helpful way to think about it.

The real question is not whether you are ambitious, but whether your ambition is costing more than it should.

Growing a business shouldn’t require permanent overextension, no time for family or fun and, ultimately, burnout. Instead, you can work in sprints, where something demands a bit more time from you, but there’s an end to it, a point where you stop and go back to a more relaxed way of working and enjoying life simultaneously.

Practical takeaway: Define what “enough” looks like (realistically) in this season of your business. That could be revenue, time, headcount, margin, or simply the ability to finish work without carrying it into every evening. If you never define enough, the business will always ask for more.

To wrap up

The best part of this episode was that it didn’t glorify discipline as perfection or a personality trait.

It made focus feel practical and achievable for anyone.

You don’t need to become a completely different person overnight, but you do need to know what matters, what’s draining you, and what no longer deserves space on your plate.

Because the goal is not to prove how much you can carry, it’s to build a business that moves forward without breaking you in the process.