Access the essential membership for Modern Managers
Key Takeaways
- Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. It is different to stress, which is often short-term, as it can take place over a longer period.
- It can occur when things at work change for the worse, or if you become disillusioned with your role.
- There are ways you can prevent and recover from burnout.
- You can assess how you feel about your role and your risk of burnout with this self-assessment tool.
Burnout occurs when passionate, committed people become deeply disillusioned with a job or career from which they have previously derived much of their identity and meaning.
It comes as the things that inspire passion and enthusiasm are stripped away, and tedious or unpleasant things crowd in.
This tool can help you to check yourself for burnout. It helps you to look at the way you feel about your job and your experiences at work, so that you can get a feel for whether you are at risk of burnout.
Instructions
For each question, click the radio button in the column that most applies. Then click the 'Calculate My Total' button to add up your score and check your result using the scoring table underneath.
See our article on Avoiding Burnout if you think you might be at risk of it. See our article on Recovering From Burnout if you think it might already have occurred.
Note:
This tool uses an informal approach to assessing burnout. While it may be intuitively useful, it has not been validated through controlled scientific tests and must therefore not be used as a diagnostic technique.
Please, therefore, interpret the results with common sense. Also, make allowances for any recent events that may have a disproportionate influence on your mood at the time you take the test!
If you prefer rigorously validated tests, then the Maslach Burnout Inventory may be useful. This was developed by Christina Maslach, one of the leading researchers in the field of burnout. Copies can be purchased at this site.
If you want to reproduce this quiz, you can purchase downloadable copies in our Store.
Warning:
Stress can cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, death.
While these stress management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect on reducing stress, they are for guidance only, and readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if they have any concerns over stress-related illnesses or if stress is causing significant or persistent unhappiness.
Health professionals should also be consulted before any major change in diet or levels of exercise.
