The Hidden Cost of Being Highly Committed in Business

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by Elena Garrett, Realtor, February 2026

The Current Reality Of “Successful” Real Estate Business of 6 Years

If you work in real estate, design, consulting, or any people-facing business where your livelihood depends on understanding, reassuring, explaining, and emotionally syncing with others, you might recognize it.

For the last six years, my life looked like this: My days were filled with conversations. Phone calls. Coffee meetings. Messages. Follow-ups. Explanations. I was always “working,” driving, taking on the phone, taking notes, sending folow up emails, researching data for someone who called to ask about this and that… And I was always… exhausted.

I normalized it. I told myself this was simply the price of being in a face-to-face profession — that emotional availability, constant responsiveness, and mental overextension were part of the job. If I wanted to survive, I had to be available. If I wanted to succeed, I had to care more, explain more, show up more. So I did.

I worked through fatigue, headaches, mental fog, pain in my body, blurred vision even – in short, I worked through days when my body was clearly asking me to stop. What I didn’t see — or didn’t allow myself to see — was that while I was busy almost every waking hour, the business results didn’t match the effort.

Income stayed inconsistent despite higher and higher pace. Conversion from calls to closed cases continued to stay flat or even dropped. And rest felt like a violation of responsibility. Weekends were filled with open houses and showings. Week days were a non-stop task switching between calls, research, emails, brochures, etc. I wasn’t avoiding more work – Lord no! I was drowning deeper and deeper in it. No weekends. Long daily drives to showings. Feeling exhausted, always behind on my to-do list, and completely overwhelmed.

And then, recently, that way of living nearly killed me. After a serious car accident — one that could have taken not just my life, but someone else’s — I was forced to stop long enough to ask a question I had been avoiding for years:

Why does doing “everything right” is, in fact, so… physically unsustainable?

That question became the beginning of a much deeper examination — not of my work ethic, but of the invisible systems that had been running my life without my consent.

The Invisible Systems I Didn’t Know I Was Running

What made this so hard to see was that none of it felt “incorrect” but the results were definitely pointing to SOMETHING being wrong. Every choice I was making felt reasonable in isolation.

Answering the phone was exactly what was expected of me. Driving for a coffee meeting with a potential client was a text-book real estate productivity. Taking the late-night Zoom meeting felt like a great “relationship building”. Following up on missed business calls while driving to an appointment was being professional and diligent. Explaining different options to different clients over and over again felt like delivering the value they needed.

From the outside — and even from the inside — it looked like a near perfect execution of everything I was told to do by my trainers, managers, and coaches. But when I finally slowed down enough to look at my days as a whole, a strange and dysfunctional pattern emerged.

I wasn’t actually “deciding” how to spend my time on any given moment. It felt like something else (or somewhat else) was. My attention moved automatically toward whatever felt most urgent, most emotional, or most unresolved. Whoever needed reassurance. Whatever conversation felt unfinished. Whatever situation carried even a hint of discomfort if left alone.

I didn’t wake up in the morning and choose this order. It simply happened through the day. And the more tired I became, the more automatic it got.

How “Choice” Quietly Disappeared

The unsettling realization was this:

I still felt like I was choosing which calls to take or which emails to write — but was I ACTUALLY choosing? My days were being shaped by a set of internal rules I had never written, never examined, and never agreed to.

Rules like:

“If someone calls you and needs help, you should respond.”
“If something in the conversation is unresolved, it must be addressed in a follow up email.”
“If you can make things clearer for someone who felt confused about their actions, you should make sure to send more info.”
“If you don’t, you’re being irresponsible.”

None of these rules are wrong on their own. But together, unexamined, they formed a system that quietly dictated my behavior — regardless of cost, context, or consequence.

Why This Didn’t Feel Like a Problem at First

The most deceptive part was that this system rewarded me just enough to keep going. I felt useful. I was praised for my work. I felt emotionally rewarded for my work. I felt competent. I felt strangely happy. But my business results stubbornly were telling me that I was moving in the wrong direction faster and faster.

The system didn’t move me forward. But it definitely kept me in motion.

The Question That Finally Changed Everything

Once I saw this pattern, a different question emerged — one that cut through years of self-judgment.

It wasn’t:

“Why can’t I grow my business faster?”

It was:

“What system is REALLY deciding my business outcomes — and why? Because it is definitely not ME, as I do have full intention of making it grow. So what system is actively blocking it?”

That question cracked something open.

Because for the first time, I stopped treating my “running in circles” as a personal failure — and started seeing it as the predictable outcome of an invisible structure running unchecked.

The Invisible Treadmill

What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t just overworked. I was running on an invisible treadmill. There was constant movement — calls, meetings, explanations, follow-ups — with or without corresponding forward progress. Effort was real, exhaustion was real, but advancement was occasionally there, but often not.

The clearest sign that I wasn’t moving forward was not how tired I felt. It was my income. I watched my business revenue follow the same pattern over and over again:
stagnate, dip, recover slightly, stagnate again, dip again.

I improved systems. I refined processes. I added tools, templates, workflows. I designed more videos, articles, brochures, questionnaires, yard signs… On paper, things were getting better. More and more calls poured in, more and more conversations were happening, more and more people were signing up work with me. Yet, none of those improvements translated into sustained income growth that I could rely on to continue. It seems for every 1 inch of progress I needed to work 2x harder than for the previous achievement.

That’s when it became undeniable: I wasn’t failing to work hard enough — I was running in place. Just like on a treadmill, effort increased, speed increased, even efficiency improved —but the distance traveled remained zero.

That realization mattered, because it ruled out motivation, discipline, and intelligence as the problem. Something structural was keeping movement from turning into progress.

And once that became clear, the question was no longer “What should I improve next?”
It became:

“What mechanism is absorbing all this effort without letting it compound?”

That question is what led me to the concept that finally explained everything.

The Pattern That Wouldn’t Stop

Once I started looking at patterns instead of my processes, something became obvious very quickly. The same types of activities kept dominating my days.

Phone calls that needed clarification. Messages that carried uncertainty. Conversations that felt unfinished. Situations where someone needed reassurance, explanation, or guidance.

None of these were wrong on their own. But together, they formed a repeating pattern that didn’t seem to respond to logic, planning, or effort. For example, even when I knew a conversation would not lead to a transaction — not now, not in six months, not ever — I still felt compelled to engage and stay in the conversation until the person on the other side felt heard, understood, and guided.

Even when I knew I needed to work on something else, my attention kept snapping back to whatever felt unresolved. This wasn’t a one-off mistake. It was automatic.

Naming the Mechanism: Open Loops

What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t reacting to importance. I was reacting to unfinishedness.

Psychology has a name for this phenomenon: open loops. An open loop is anything the mind perceives as incomplete:

an unresolved conversation
an unanswered question
a situation without closure
a person left uncertain

Open loops generate mental tension. And the brain is wired to relieve that tension as quickly as possible. That’s not a character trait. That’s a survival mechanism.

Why Open Loops Took Over My Days

In a people-facing business, open loops are everywhere. Each one creates a small internal pull:

This needs to be resolved.

And here’s the critical part: Open loops don’t care whether resolution leads to results. They only care that the discomfort goes away.

So my nervous system kept prioritizing what felt unresolved over what was actually important and over what would meaningfully compound. That’s how effort kept getting absorbed without turning into progress.

Why This Looked Like Productivity

From the outside, it still looked like work. I was talking about business, explaining strategies, helping people think things through, and overall being responsive and available. That’s why this mechanism is so dangerous. It doesn’t feel like avoidance. It feels like genuine and productive work. But responsibility without hierarchy turns into false productivity — motion that consumes energy without building anything durable.

And once I understood that open loops were quietly deciding what I worked on, the entire pattern finally made sense.

What Open Loops Actually Optimize For

Here’s the critical distinction I hadn’t understood before:

Open loops do not care about outcomes. They don’t care about revenue. They don’t care about growth. They don’t care about sustainability or compounding effort. They care about immediate relief.

An open loop creates tension — and the nervous system’s only goal is to make that tension stop. That’s it. Closure, reassurance, explanation, acknowledgment — any of these will do.

Completion Compulsion vs. Business Progress

Because of this, my nervous system wasn’t prioritizing what would build my business over time (even though I was constantly writing out and thinking of new ways to generate business income).

It was prioritizing what would:

close the loop fastest
reduce discomfort quickest
restore a sense of completion

That’s how the neurological activity replaced logic, training, ideas, and plans that all were designed to take me in the right business direction.

My system didn’t ask:

“Will this generate more business income?”

It asked:

“Will this resolve something right now?”

And anything that promised immediate closure, it would short-circuit my emotions, override my intentions, and take over.

False Productivity and the Hustle Culture Trap

Once I saw the loop-closure treadmill for what it was, something else became obvious. This system wasn’t unique to me. It was hustle culture — fully internalized.

Hustle culture doesn’t ask whether your efforts are compounding. It doesn’t ask whether today’s work makes tomorrow easier. It doesn’t ask whether activity leads to leverage. It asks only one thing:

Are you hustling hard and long enough?

Work more. Work longer. Be more available than everyone else. Respond faster. Stay more visible. Stay busier than the next guy.

Motion becomes the goal and the metric.

Why Hustle Culture Feels So Convincing

In people-facing businesses like real estate, hustle culture sounds responsible.

We’re told:

“Can you increase your follow-up calls?”
“What are you doing to stay top of mind?”
“How many people from your database did you connect with this week?”
“Go ahead and schedule check-ins with old leads, even if there’s no business right now.”
“Have more conversations — conversations lead to opportunity.”
“You had 10 conversations yesterday? You are crushing it!”

As is the activity IS the business. And on the surface, none of that is wrong. Talking about someone’s recent breakup with their husband feels like some potential future business. Discussing plans for a baby to come soon feel like some future business waiting to happen. Conversations, drop-ins, coffee together feels like a a part of the business plan.

So when the day is full of calls and messages, it feels like progress. But nowhere in this framework is there a question about whether the results are compounding. It is ASSUMED that more activity will surely result in MORE income. The instruction is simply:

Have more conversations.

Hustle culture pairs perfectly with open loops.

Unfinished conversations create urgency. Urgency demands response. Response creates relief. That relief feels like being “high” on some super-duper productivity. So the treadmill keeps spinning — fueled by the belief that more hustle equals more stamina, clients, success, and money, even if the evidence says otherwise.

I wasn’t failing at hustle culture. I was executing it perfectly. And that was the problem.

When Activity Replaces Direction

The most damaging part wasn’t my psychical and emotional exhaustion. It was displacement of my energy into low-productivity activities.

Time spent closing low-impact loops crowded out:

deep execution
system building
committed client work
long, complex efforts that actually compound

False productivity didn’t look like laziness. It looked like I was “crushing it”.

The Lie at the Center

The biggest lie of the hustle culture isn’t that hard work matters. The lie is that all work compounds equally.

Hustle culture trains us to run faster — but never asks us to keep asking ourselves whether we’re running in the correct direction. That’s how I ended up working harder every year while my results stayed stubbornly flat.

Hustle culture trained me to believe that conversations equal progress. But income doesn’t come from closed loops. Just like people don’t get nourished by eating candy and chocolate cake, businesses don’t grow on conversations alone. It must generate results (income) quickly, efficiently, and consistently – or it dies.

The Sugar High of Dopamine-Driven Actions

This is where the whole system finally clicked for me. The reason false productivity kept winning wasn’t because it was easier. It was because it was rewarded faster. Dopamine isn’t the chemical of reward. It’s the chemical of anticipation.

It spikes when the brain senses:

relief is coming
uncertainty is being reduced
tension is about to end

That’s why certain activities feel so compelling — even when we know they don’t lead anywhere. Those constant business conversations were like soda. Quick sip. Immediate buzz. Fast relief. Every call, every explanation, every “let me come up with a solution for your problem” moment delivered a small dopamine hit. It felt energizing. It felt productive. It felt like momentum.

But just like soda, it didn’t nourish anything. It spiked my energy — and then dropped it. It made me feel fulfilled — without nourishing my business. And the more tired or bored I became, the more my nervous system craved another sip.

Why This Beat Real Work Every Time

The work that actually grows a business — execution, systems, follow-through, long transactions — doesn’t deliver dopamine quickly. It’s more like water and fiber. Slow. Quiet. Unexciting. No instant buzz. No immediate relief. In fact, it often increases tension before it resolves it.

So when my nervous system had a choice between:

a quick, stimulating conversation
or sitting down to do difficult, unresolved work

it chose the soda.

Not because I was weak — but because biology always prefers fast relief over delayed reward.

The Sugar Crash

After a few of these conversations, I’d feel wired and upbeat. Then drained. Emotionally spent. Mentally scattered. Unable to focus on deep, necessary work.

That’s the sugar crash.

And it explains something I couldn’t understand for years: why I felt “too tired” to do the routine and quiet work — even after a short period of high intensity phone calls and other “face to face” activity with my clients or potential clients. I hadn’t worked less. I had burned my energy on stimulation instead of nourishment.

Simple Loops: Fast Closure, Fast Reward

Simple loops are easy to start and easy to close.

They include:

a quick conversation
answering a question
giving reassurance
explaining a concept
brainstorming possibilities

They require:

little preparation
little risk
little sustained effort

Most importantly, they offer immediate closure. The moment the conversation ends, the loop feels complete. Tension drops. Dopamine is released. Relief arrives. Simple loops feel productive because they end cleanly and create a sense of accomplishment.

Complex Loops: Slow, Layered, and Uncomfortable

Complex loops are different.

They include:

executing a long, complicated transaction filled with tense conversation and negative feedback from the clients
building complicated systems and processes
training assistants
refining invisible existing processes (eg, handoff, funnel improvement, etc)
working through leads or cases associated with anticipation of rejection

They don’t close quickly. They stay open across days, weeks, and months.

They require revisiting the same problem multiple times, often without visible progress or external validation. And instead of reducing tension, they frequently increase it — at least in the short term. Since there is no “closure” offered, the dopamine hit never arrives, and the work feels unrewarding and boring.

Why the System Became Inverted

Here’s the crucial insight: My nervous system began prioritizing loops that could be closed, not loops that actaually needed to be completed in a specific day/week.

Simple loops offered fast dopamine, emotional relief, a sense of progress. Complex loops demanded endurance, repetition, delayed reward, sometimes significant discomfort. So without realizing it, I started choosing the work that felt complete over the work that actually creating complex and completed outcomes.

That inversion explains everything:

why I kept switching projects
why execution felt draining
why conversations crowded out systems
why effort didn’t compound

Complex loops are where businesses are actually built. They don’t just close tension — they create actual business maturity. But because they don’t reward the nervous system immediately, they’re easy to postpone, fragment, or take a dopamine flush and then abandon.

Simple loops don’t just consume time — they distort business priorities. They reorder what feels important to complete.

How Committed Clients Started to Get Crowded Out by Uncommitted Conversations

This is where real damage happens. Committed clients who already signed work agreements with me don’t generate constant tension. They’ve already said yes. They already trusted me. They were now waiting. That calmness is exactly what makes them vulnerable in a dopamine loop-driven system.

Meanwhile, uncommitted relationships generate questions, hesitation, emotional volatility, open-ended conversations… Those things create loops. And loops demand closure. So attention quietly shifts away from what is already committed — toward what is emotionally unfinished. Automatically.

Why This Feels Like “Doing the Right Thing” For My Business

The hardest part is that this distortion doesn’t feel selfish or irresponsible. It feels like being responsive to the call volume, taking care of potential clients, being available, and, in fact, being professional. That is why I never questioned it – I only questioned the lack of business income growth.

But when priority is governed by emotional activation instead of commitment, the system starts feeding the loudest “projects” — not the ones that actually generate business income.

The Compounding Cost

Over time, this inversion creates a subtle but ever-so-slightly noticeable pattern:

urgently needed projects and outcomes get delayed
systems stay unfinished, fragmented, constantly changing
trust with committed clients erodes quietly
growth plateaus

All while activity and phone calls and conversations actually increase. From the outside, it looks like “crushing it”. From the inside, it feels like overwhelm. Structurally, it’s a tangled mess of misordered priorities.