Dreading Monday by Sunday afternoon. Tired in a way a weekend no longer fixes. "Burnout" has become the word for it — but how exhausted are you really, and how much of it do you connect to your job?
Those are the two questions our burnout test answers. Here is how it works and what it cannot tell you.
A burnout test measures prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion and how much of it a person attributes to their work. This test administers the personal and work-related scales of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI; Kristensen et al., 2005), each scored from 0 to 100, with the authors' line of 50 marking a high degree of burnout. It measures a changeable state, not a personality trait or a medical diagnosis.
Burnout as exhaustion, and where you place it
The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI; Kristensen et al., 2005) defines burnout as prolonged physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion, and asks where you attribute it. Our test uses two of its scales, each scored 0 to 100:
- ✦Personal burnout: how exhausted you are overall, whatever the cause.
- ✦Work-related burnout: how much of that exhaustion you connect to your work.
What the 50-point line means
The authors' own documents define a high degree of burnout as 50 points or more. In their study of nearly two thousand Danish human-service workers, about one in five were at or above that line on the work-related scale.
Sites that sort scores into mild, moderate, and severe are using lines that do not appear in the source, so we do not. If your likely range straddles 50, the result says you are near the line rather than picking a side.
Not the Maslach Burnout Inventory
The MBI is the best-known burnout measure and a commercial instrument. The CBI was developed by Danish researchers with public funds and shared free of charge. They also define burnout differently: the MBI includes cynicism and reduced accomplishment, while the CBI focuses on exhaustion and its attribution. Scores do not convert between them.
A state, not a trait — and not a diagnosis
The authors followed workers for three years and found many moved by five points or more in either direction. Burnout scores describe something that changes. Retake in a comparable week, not the day after a deadline.
Burnout is classified in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition, and exhaustion can overlap with medical issues such as depression or thyroid problems. If you are struggling, a doctor can help tell them apart. Whether to share your result with an employer is entirely your call.