How Do I Know If I’m Burned Out?
- Melani Nikolic
- Oct 1
- 3 min read
⏱️ ~5 min read (aka 1/6 of a Pomodoro, so quick you still have time to make coffee ☕🍅)
Burnout is not “I’m tired.”
Burnout is “I’m empty.”
Burnout is “I don’t recognise myself.”
It is the moment the fuel light has been on so long you forget cars need gas.
You wake up exhausted before the alarm even thinks about screaming.
Coffee is no longer a pleasure; it is a prosthesis.
You cry in the grocery store because they are out of your yogurt.
You snap at the dog for breathing too loudly.
And, most telling, you catch yourself wishing for a minor illness that would land you in hospital: nothing dramatic, just enough to make rest socially acceptable.
Those are not “bad weeks.”
They are your nervous system waving a cortisol-soaked white flag.
The Warning Signs
Researchers group the red flags into four clusters:
Physical: unrefreshing sleep, headaches, gut trouble, tight muscles, pervasive fatigue.
Emotional: irritability, cynicism, numbness, feeling nothing you do matters.
Cognitive: brain fog, forgotten deadlines, rumination you can’t switch off.
Behavioural: skipping meetings, withdrawing from friends, sarcasm as a first language.
Crucially, these symptoms are not only unpleasant; they are measurable.
Longitudinal studies show that burnout erodes working memory, slows inhibition control, and increases everyday cognitive failures (Kulikowski, 2020). In short, burnout makes you less able to think, regulate, and perform.
Why We Burn Out
Burnout is the signature disease of high-demand, low-resource cultures.
It is not fixed by a long weekend or a juice cleanse; it is the collapse of a system that asks too much and gives too little.
Christina Maslach’s three-dimensional model: exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy; remains the gold standard (Maslach et al., 2001).
Exhaustion is the first domino, but the fall is complete only when you stop believing you are effective and begin to detach from work and the people around it.
The Job-Demands–Resources model explains the mechanics: when demands (deadlines, emotional labour, role confusion) chronically exceed resources (autonomy, support, recovery time), the equation predictably ends in burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001).
Too much + too little = shut-down.
Check Yourself
Science offers two quick screens:
Maslach Burnout Inventory – validated, 22 items, measures all three dimensions. Ask your trusted doctor or therapist
Burnout Assessment Tool – ten questions, free online, WHO-approved. Link here.
Score moderate or higher?
That is not weakness; it is data. Under ICD-11, burnout is an occupational syndrome with diagnostic codes. Your pain is medically real, not a meme.
What Burnout Is (and Isn’t)
Burnout is not a personal failure; it is a signal.
It tells you that the gap between what you are asked to give and what you have to give has become untenable.
Listen early and the crisis can become a pivot: realign values, redesign work, reinvest in recovery.
Ignore it and the dominoes keep falling, until the only thing you can do is stand still.
References
Bianchi, R., Schonfeld, I. S., & Laurent, E. (2015). Burnout–depression overlap: A review.
Clinical Psychology Review, 36, 28–41.
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86 (3), 499–512.
Kulikowski, K. (2020). Burnout and cognitive functioning: A review of the literature.
Psychological Reports, 123 (6), 2143–2173.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422.
Petersen, A. H. (2019). Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Schenk, D., & Neely, S. (2023). Into the Field of Suffering: Finding the Other Side of Burnout.
Tschierske, N. (2023). Better Work: A Leader’s Guide to Creating Happier, Healthier, and More Productive Workplaces.
World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”.
International Classification of Diseases (11th rev.).
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