In any given business, the ideal state is that you can get away doing the least while creating the most outcome. In practice, idling looks like wasted cost, lost revenue. This philosophy is the result of us getting conditioned by centuries of economic model where labor time can be valued economically.
It is hard escaping being a victim to this hustling mentality, where simply believing that if one can put in more hours one would be achieving more -- this view get more wrong with every progress made to automation and technology.
When I'm composing music, in any given moment not all instruments are busy playing their own notes, yet somehow they are still able to create an "effective symphony" with so little activity from each individual.
In fact, achieving a real symphony depends on pauses, emphasis, and handing the spotlight, moment by moment, to different performers.
The best composers or conductors don't make everyone play all the time. When I was an amateur, I thought the requirement to be a good composer is complexity, difficulty, and novelty, yet I notice a lot of great composers can get away with composition that is simple to play (C-major), cliched progressions (4/4 time signature) (1-4-5-6 progression) and still hitting the top charts.
Inversely, a composition that is played by all parts of the orchestra constantly with complex maneuver are actually works done by an amateur. With the advent of digital music, it is now possible for composers to write in range and complexity that are impossible to perform.
If difficulty and activity are signs of skill, then music topping the charts would have been electronic music with 10 instruments playing throughout the song at 200 BPM, with SFX automation clips stacked over one another. Clearly, the playlists we choose don't look like this.
Given the lack of correlation (that is continuing to decrease) between activity and outcome, somehow businesses and people who want to improve their personal career are still stuck with the mindset that "activity >> outcome".
Somehow, it is unacceptable for any employee to not have a backlog full of events. It is shameful to be seen by your friends that you don't have a full schedule one month ahead of you. You look like a loser if you don't have anything going on during your weekends or holidays.
Ask any artist, software developer, writer that is competent, and they always seem to arrive to the same answer-- effective emptiness, blanks, and space is required in a finished good product.
I think management and hustlers have a lot to learn from these people.