Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4, Verse 18

He who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, he is intelligent among men, he is a Yogi and a doer of all action.

Someone can look completely busy and still be doing nothing in the deeper sense. Someone can look still and be doing everything.

This is one of the Gita's more paradoxical-sounding lines, but it points at something concrete: whether an action binds someone has less to do with how it looks from outside and more to do with the attachment underneath it.