Home / Burnout Check
How Close to Burnout Are You?
Six questions about your energy — and what your Sunday nights say.
Burnout rarely arrives as a dramatic collapse. It creeps in as a Sunday evening that starts feeling heavy on Saturday, as tasks that used to take an hour taking three, as caring a little less than you used to.
These six questions are about your energy, focus and recovery — not a diagnosis. They're here to give you language for something you may have been explaining away for months.
- Sunday evening. How do you feel?
- Fine — Monday is just another day
- A bit of a knot, but it passes
- Dread that starts Saturday afternoon
- Nothing. I stopped caring a while ago
- A task that used to take you an hour now takes…
- About an hour, same as always
- Longer — I get distracted more
- Half a day, and it exhausts me
- I do the minimum and move on
- When you finish work, how much is left in the tank?
- Enough for my evening and people I love
- Some — but I need an hour of silence first
- Nothing. I go straight to the sofa
- I have energy, I just don't want to spend it there
- Your holidays or days off:
- I take them and come back genuinely restored
- I take them, but the rest wears off in a week
- I keep half-working through them
- I don't really take them
- How do you feel about the work itself?
- It still interests me most days
- It's fine — just heavier than it was
- I care, and that's exactly why it's draining me
- Honestly? I've gone numb about it
- If a colleague described your last three months, they'd say…
- Solid and steady
- Busy, a bit frayed at the edges
- Always on, never stops
- Present, but somewhere else
Good to know
Is this a burnout diagnosis?
No. This is a self-reflection tool for entertainment and education, not a clinical assessment. Burnout and depression share symptoms and only a qualified professional can tell them apart. If your energy, sleep or mood have been affected for weeks, please talk to a doctor or mental health professional.
What's the difference between burnout and just being tired?
Ordinary tiredness resolves with rest. The pattern people describe as burnout is when rest stops working — a weekend or holiday no longer resets you. Detachment and cynicism about work you used to care about are commonly described alongside it.
Can I recover without changing jobs?
Often, yes — the driver is usually workload, autonomy and recognition rather than the job title. Changing those conditions where you are is the first thing worth trying. But if they can't change, that's information about the role, not about you.
Why did I get a result about caring too much?
Because the people most exposed to sustained strain tend to be the invested ones: high standards, high responsibility, absorbing what others drop. Disengagement is usually what comes later, not what starts it.