Burnt out, or just tired? 24 questions across six areas answer it.
24 questions, 4 minutes → where the load is actually coming from.
4 minutes · no signup · nothing leaves your browser · not a diagnosis
- See your load index — a single 0–100 figure, built from what you do, not how you feel about it today.
- Identify which of the six areas — workload, control, recovery, reward, community or values — is carrying the most.
- Name the three changes worth making first, ranked by leverage, not by what's easiest to fix.
- Keep every answer on your device — nothing is sent, stored or logged anywhere.
About this assessment
This is a structured self-reflection tool based on an established occupational framework — the Areas of Worklife model and the World Health Organization's ICD-11 definition of burnout. It is not a diagnosis, not a clinical instrument, and not a substitute for a doctor or therapist. No score below can tell you, or anyone else, whether you have a health condition — only a qualified clinician can do that.
If you are in crisis, or having thoughts of harming yourself, contact your local emergency services or a crisis line now. That kind of support exists in every country, whatever this page can or cannot reach.
Item 1 of 24
Workload
Press 1–5 to answer · arrows to move
Your load index
Answer the statements to begin. The result appears here as a sentence first, a number second.
A self-assessment against an occupational framework — not a diagnosis, and not a measure of any medical condition.
A load this heavy is worth talking to a GP, doctor or therapist about — not because this tool can diagnose anything, but because persistent exhaustion has physical causes that are worth ruling out. That conversation is a reasonable next step, not an overreaction.
By area
Your answers
0 of 24 answered
The order to do it in
Three changes worth making first
Ranked by what each area is worth, multiplied by how much load it is currently carrying, divided by how hard it is to act on. Not by what is easiest to write a newsletter about.
Answer a few statements and the changes worth making appear here, highest-leverage first.
Methodology
How this is calculated
Every part of the score is worked out on your device from the answers you give. Nothing is fetched, nothing is uploaded, and the working is published below so you can check it — or disagree with it.
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01
Score each statement on how often it's true
Every item is a concrete, behavioural statement — not a feeling — answered on a five-point frequency scale:
Never,Rarely,Sometimes,Often,Always, converted to 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1. -
02
Weight six areas the way the research weights them
The items are grouped into the six Areas of Worklife from Leiter and Maslach's model — workload, control, reward, community and values, plus one adaptation. Recovery replaces fairness as a standalone area, because for someone working alone, recovery is the dominant modifiable variable — there is no manager rationing your hours, so whether the work actually stops is a live variable in a way it usually isn't for an employee. Fairness items — late payment, discounting, rates that haven't moved — are folded into Reward instead of dropped. Weights: Workload 20, Control 18, Recovery 20, Reward 14, Community 14, Values 14, summing to 100.
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03
Flip the protective statements before adding anything up
Some statements describe load directly — "I check messages within 30 minutes of waking" — where answering
Alwaysmeans high load. Others are protective — "I have turned down work in the last three months" — where answeringAlwaysmeans low load. Each item carries a flag for which kind it is, and protective items are inverted (1 minus the answer) before they are weighted, so a high final index always means high load, regardless of which way the sentence reads. -
04
Rank changes by leverage, not by what's easiest to fix
For every item, leverage is the item's weight, multiplied by how much load it is currently contributing, divided by the effort to act on it. The three highest scores become the changes shown above. This is why a small, cheap fix in an under-weighted area can outrank a bigger fix in a heavily-weighted one — the formula rewards leverage, not size.
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05
Turn the total into one of five descriptive bands
The 24 weighted scores sum to a single figure from 0 to 100. That figure sits in one of five bands — Sustainable, Manageable, Strained, Depleting or Critical — each with a plain-language description of what tends to be true at that level. The bands describe a pattern; they do not diagnose one.
Sources cited on this page
- Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. (2004) — "Areas of worklife: A structured approach to organizational predictors of job burnout." Research in Occupational Stress and Well-being, Vol. 3. Source of the six areas — workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values — this tool's dimensions are built on.
- Maslach, C. & Jackson, S.E. (1981) — "The measurement of experienced burnout." Journal of Occupational Behaviour, 2(2). Origin of the three-dimension model — exhaustion, cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment — that the WHO definition below builds on.
- World Health Organization — ICD-11, QD85 "Burn-out." Classified as an occupational phenomenon in May 2019, in effect since 1 January 2022. The exhaustion / cynicism / reduced-efficacy definition used throughout this page.
- West, C.P., Dyrbye, L.N., Erwin, P.J. & Shanafelt, T.D. (2016) — "Interventions to prevent and reduce physician burnout: a systematic review and meta-analysis." The Lancet, 388(10057). Organisation-directed interventions outperformed individual-directed ones — the basis for the answer section below on what actually helps.
- Wigert, B. & Agrawal, S., Gallup (2018) — "Employee Burnout, Part 1: The 5 Main Causes." Unfair treatment, unmanageable workload and lack of role clarity or support were among the top causes identified across a large working sample — consistent with the areas weighted most heavily here.
This is self-report on a single day, and it reflects a moment, not a trend. Scores move with sleep, workload and whatever else is happening the week you take it — a bad week before a deadline will score worse than a representative one. One reading means less than the same reading taken a month apart. If this number matters to you, retake it periodically and watch the direction, not the single figure.
What this is not
- Not a diagnosis. No score on this page can tell you, or anyone else, whether you have depression, anxiety, or any other medical condition.
- Not a validated clinical instrument. It borrows a respected research framework; it is not the Maslach Burnout Inventory and carries none of that instrument's evidentiary weight.
- Not a comparison against other people. There is no norm group behind these numbers — the only useful comparison is your own score against your own score a month from now.
- Not something to hand to a client, employer or insurer. It was built for your own use, not as evidence of anything to a third party.
- Not a substitute for talking to someone. A page cannot replace a doctor, a therapist, or an honest conversation with a person who actually knows you.
Questions people ask about burnout
What is burnout, actually?
The World Health Organization's ICD-11 classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition — a syndrome from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It has three dimensions: energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from or cynicism about your job, and reduced professional efficacy. It describes a mismatch between a person and their working conditions, not a personal failing or something a form can diagnose.
What is the difference between burnout and being tired?
Ordinary tiredness lifts with a weekend and a decent night's sleep. Burnout does not — it is the accumulated result of a workload-and-recovery imbalance sustained for months, and it changes how you relate to the work itself: caring less, doubting your own competence, going through motions that used to feel automatic. If two days off restores you, that is fatigue. If it barely touches how you feel about Monday, that is a heavier thing.
Can you burn out working for yourself?
Yes, and arguably more easily. The Areas of Worklife model names workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values as the organisational drivers of burnout, and working solo removes none of them — it just removes the manager who might have noticed. Nobody caps your hours, benchmarks your pay, or checks whether you have had a real day off. Autonomy is protective in theory; left unmanaged, it becomes the mechanism instead.
How long does it take to recover from burnout?
There is no fixed timeline, and anyone offering one is guessing. It depends on how long the load ran unaddressed, whether the underlying conditions — workload, control, recovery — actually change or just get a holiday, and what else is happening physically. Energy can return within weeks; rebuilding your relationship to the work, the cynicism piece, tends to take longer, and depends on the load genuinely reducing, not merely pausing.
What actually helps when you cannot stop working?
Less than the wellness industry suggests. A 2016 meta-analysis in The Lancet found interventions aimed at the organisation — workload, scheduling, control — outperformed those aimed at the individual, such as resilience or mindfulness training, especially where the workload itself never changed. For someone working alone, that points the lever at the business: fewer commitments, defended recovery time, visible income — not another course on managing your reaction to a load that stays the same.
Common follow-ups
Does anything I answer here get sent anywhere?
No. This runs as a single JavaScript file in your browser — there is no server call, no analytics event carrying your answers, no account and no storage. If you copy the result link, your answers are encoded in the URL itself, so treat that link the way you would treat the answers.
Is this the same as the Maslach Burnout Inventory?
No. The Maslach Burnout Inventory is a licensed, validated psychometric instrument administered and interpreted by researchers or clinicians. This tool borrows its three-dimension definition and the Areas of Worklife model that explains organisational drivers, but it is a free, unlicensed self-reflection exercise — not a substitute for either, and not carrying the same evidentiary weight.
Can I retake this and see if anything changes?
Yes, and that is a better use of it than a single reading. Copy the result link after answering — your answers are encoded in the URL — and retake it in a month against the same questions. The direction matters more than any single score, because one day's answers reflect a moment, not a pattern.
Should I use this to check on a colleague, employee or contractor?
No. This is built for self-assessment by the person answering it, and the honesty of the result depends on that. Using it to evaluate someone else, with or without their knowledge, defeats the purpose — if you manage someone showing signs of this, have an actual conversation with them instead.
Next
Load is a business problem before it is a wellbeing problem.
Two of the biggest levers on the Workload and Reward areas above are structural, not personal — what you charge, and what scope actually costs you. These two tools work the numbers.