A burnout self-assessment for high performers

If you have taken an online burnout test and been told you are fine, that is not reassuring. It is a measurement error.

Standard instruments were validated on employee populations and lean heavily on visible disengagement — reduced performance, absenteeism, withdrawal. You have none of those, because you are the person the whole thing depends on and you would rather bleed than miss the quarter.

So here is what I actually ask. Answer honestly rather than accurately — your instinct is a better instrument than your reasoning here.

Section one — the conversion test

The single most diagnostic area. Score one point per yes.

1. After a genuinely restful weekend, is the benefit gone within three days?
2. Do you wake up unrefreshed after a full night more often than not?
3. Did your last holiday improve things, and did the improvement evaporate within a week of returning?
4. Does a demanding week now cost you noticeably longer to come back from than it did two years ago?

Three or four here matters more than anything else on this page. It means rest has stopped converting, which is the definition of depletion rather than tiredness.

Section two — the discretionary functions

These shut down in a consistent order when a system runs a deficit. Score one point per yes.

1. Has your humour gone quiet — not that you're miserable, but the unbidden part has stopped?
2. Does patience now cost something, where it used to cost nothing?
3. Can you remember the last time you were curious about something with no purpose attached?
4. When someone starts telling you something, does part of you calculate how long it will take?
5. Has your capacity for the unplanned yes disappeared?

Three or more suggests you are well into stage two or beyond. The order matters: if generosity and curiosity have gone, this has been running for a long time.

Section three — judgment

The expensive section, and the one people find most uncomfortable.

1. How many significant decisions have been sitting open for more than a month? (Three or more: score a point.)
2. When did you last originate something rather than execute it? (More than six months: score a point.)
3. Have you recently made a call in ninety seconds that deserved a night's sleep?
4. Has your team quietly started routing around you, or pre-deciding things rather than bringing them?

Two or more means the asset you are actually paid for has degraded — and note that confidence does not drop when this happens. It often rises.

Section four — what has been deleted

1. Name one thing you do purely because it returns energy to you. (Cannot name one: score a point.)
2. Have training, friendships, or reading quietly disappeared over the last three years? (Score a point per area.)
3. In the last six months, has anything genuinely landed — a good meal, your children, music, a win? (Nothing: score a point.)
4. Are you present with your family, or efficient with them? (Efficient: score a point.)

Section five — the pattern

1. Have you said "I just need to get through the next three months" more than twice in the last two years?
2. Do you have enough money to stop, and cannot stop?
3. Have you seriously imagined selling everything and disappearing?
4. Could you sustain the current arrangement for another five years? (No: score a point.)

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Reading it

0–4. You are working hard and recovering. This is a demanding role functioning as designed. Keep an eye on section one.

5–9. Stage two — accumulation. Output is untouched, discretionary capacity is going. This is the cheapest possible moment to act, and almost nobody does, because nothing is visibly wrong. Small structural changes still work at this level and work fast.

10–14. Stage three — depletion. Rest has stopped converting and judgment has started to move. Ordinary recovery will not touch this; that is what defines the stage. This is where most people who contact me actually are, typically eighteen months to three years in.

15+. Advanced. Get a medical assessment as a genuine first step, not a formality — and read the section below before doing anything else.

The question this test cannot answer

None of this distinguishes burnout from depression, and that distinction matters far more than your score.

If the flatness is total — if it does not lift at all on good days, if nothing cuts through, if there is early waking or any thought of not wanting to be here — that is a clinical picture and it belongs with a doctor rather than a coach. Please make that call rather than filling in another questionnaire.

What to do with a high score

Not panic, and not a dramatic decision. People in this state reliably reach for the biggest available lever — sell, quit, leave — and decisions made from depletion have a poor record.

The order that works: stabilise first, then look at what your week is actually made of, then decide anything. It is slower than you want and it is the sequence that holds.

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If you scored above ten and your immediate reaction was to note it and move on to the next thing, that reaction is itself one of the findings.