"Probably fine" is the most common answer people give when asked if they are burning out, and it is usually given while they are. This check takes two minutes and gives you something better than probably.
How it works
The questions follow the three dimensions the World Health Organization and the Maslach research use to describe burnout. Each statement asks how often it has been true over the last month, from rarely to almost every day. Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent or saved.
Answer for how things are, not how you would like them to be, and not how you were in your best month this year.
Two-minute self-check
For each statement, pick how often it has been true over the last month. Answer for how things are, not how you would like them to be.
Reading your result
The total matters less than the split. Burnout is not one feeling; it is three that tend to travel together, and the one leading for you points at what to change.
Exhaustion highest. The problem is recovery. Something about your load has outrun your capacity to restore it, and the usual answer, a weekend, will not be enough on its own. Start with Why weekends don't fix burnout.
Mental distance highest. The problem is meaning or fairness. Cynicism is what people produce when they care about work that does not seem to care back: too little say, too little recognition, or values that no longer line up with the job's. Burnout at work: is it the job or you? goes through the six mismatches that drive this.
Reduced efficacy highest. The problem is often concentration and confidence, and it is the dimension most tangled up with low mood. If this is high and the other two are not, read Burnout or depression?, because that pattern deserves a proper look.
What a high score does not mean
It does not mean you are weak, and it does not mean you have to quit. The pillar note, What is burnout?, explains why burnout is defined as an occupational pattern rather than a personal one. Most of the recovery literature points at changes to the work (its volume, its control, its pace) alongside real rest, and Burnout recovery: a plan that isn't "quit your job" lays that out over six weeks.
It also does not mean the same thing next month. Repeat the check in four weeks. A score that moves tells you more than any single reading.
Why this is not the real test
The validated instruments, the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory among them, are administered and interpreted by people trained to do so, and they are calibrated against large samples. This check borrows their structure, not their scoring. Treat it as a mirror, not a measurement.
If your result surprised you, the most useful next step is to say so to one person. Burnout is easier to see from the outside, and it is easier to change once it has been said out loud.
Fonti
- Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of DiseasesWorld Health Organization, 2019
- ICD-11 burnout for the psychiatrist: meaning of the concept and prevalence of the conditionPMC review, 2025
- Is burnout a depressive condition? A 14-sample meta-analytic and bifactor analytic studyBianchi et al., Clinical Psychological Science, 2021
Informazioni generali, non un consiglio medico. Se i cambiamenti di stress, sonno o umore persistono, sono intensi o mettono a rischio la tua sicurezza, parla con un professionista qualificato.
