5+ Free Online Tests, Guides, and Resources to Overcome Burnout at Work

Are you feeling too tired to work, or are you suffering from burnout? Take these free tests to find out if you have burnout, and guides to learn how to deal with it.

In 2019, WHO officially recognized burnout as an occupational phenomenon, so it’s not just “in your mind” anymore. There are signs of burnout to watch out for, and techniques to overcome burnout in your professional life.

To begin, there are a few online tests you can take, free ebooks you can pick up, and videos you can watch.

1. Take a Quiz to Test Your Burnout Level

The most popular, thorough, and medically accepted burnout test is the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Unfortunately, it is only available as a paid test. Before you pony up big bucks for that, you might want to try out some of the well-reviewed free burnout tests on the internet.

Please note that these aren’t scientifically validated, and you can’t consider them as a diagnosis of your condition. Use them as a platform to know whether you need a more clinical test like the Maslach Burnout Inventory.

Mind Tools Burnout Self-Test: Mind Tools hosts a free burnout self-test kit of 15 questions. You have to answer how deeply each statement applies to you, with choices being not at all, rarely, sometimes, often, and very often. At the end of it, you’ll get a points score, which you can then check against the score interpretation chart.

Foundation of Nursing Leadership’s Stress Level and Burnout Test: Nursing staff in hospitals are a high-risk group for burnout. The Foundation of Nursing Leadership created a free multiple-choice burnout test that takes 5-10 minutes to finish. The 35 questions apply to any profession, not just nursing, making it an effective tool to test your stress and burnout levels.

The Fried Quiz: Biologist Joan Borysenko, author of Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive, created a free questionnaire, available on Oprah.com. The Fried Quiz is a set of 14 multiple-choice questions, which attempts to figure out if you have burnt out.

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2. Extinguish Burnout (Web): Free Burnout Course and Toolkit

Robert and Terri Bogue wrote a book on identifying and dealing with burnout and turned it into a successful online course. The Extinguish Burnout course is available for free for a year during COVID-19 to help stressed workers deal with extenuating circumstances.

The Extinguish Burnout: Prevention and Recovery course has over 25 modules, each taught as a video under 13 minutes, for a total of about six hours. You can do these at your own time. It’ll take you through all the steps of identifying burnout, strategies to deal with it, and how to prevent it from happening.

The website also has other helpful resources. The Bogues made two burnout tests you can take online for free, based on the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory. They also provide a burnout toolkit full of free resources, as stop-gap aid in case you don’t want to take the full course.

3. The Burnout Shield Assessment (Web): 5 Areas to Test Your Stress Level

The Burnout Shield is a more involved questionnaire to test your burnout level. It assesses five areas of your mental make-up and life: self-care, reflection and recognition, capacity, community, coping.

You answer a series of questions about work, life, mental health, and more, to identify the factors that protect you from burnout and how vulnerable you are to it. In the final step, you’ll have to fill out a standard Holmes & Rahe Life Stress Inventory sheet. Each question has a clear description, so take your time reading it and then answer truthfully. No one is judging you, this is an indicator for your eyes only.

The whole Burnout Shield takes about half an hour, so make sure you carve out time for it. At the end of it, you’ll find your vulnerability risk for all five areas, to know where you have to step it up. Grab the free Burnout First Aid Handbook and use it as a guide to overcoming the hump. Beth Genly, the maker of Burnout Solutions, also offers a free first consultation.

You should also familiarize yourself with the four-step science-backed method to defeat stress.

4. Overcoming Burnout in 30 Days (PDF): Free Guide by Burnout Psychotherapist

Dr. Carien Karsten is a psychotherapist and coach specializing in burnout cases, with a career spanning over 20 years and multiple books. One of these is available as a free ebook on her website, Overcoming Burnout in 30 Days.

It’s a great book that dives into why you are burning out, and what you can do about it. As the title suggests, it charts a day-by-day path with small tasks to conquer burnout in a month. It teaches you a six-step method called ACCESS: Analysis, Condition, Concepts, Effective, Social, and Stabilizing. Through the book’s chapters, you’ll slowly learn to deal with burnout and how to beat it.

Dr. Karsten says that in studies, her method showed that 80% of participants got back to work. Importantly, they also had a better understanding of burnout factors and triggers, and were more mindful of them.

Download: Overcoming Burnout in 30 Days (PDF)

5. TED Talks for Burnout (Web): Watch the Best Videos on Burnout

Who better to talk about burnout than some of the biggest achievers and successful people in professional spheres? TED compiled a playlist of the best TED Talks for burnout, touching on a variety of topics. It includes mindfulness experts, psychologists, journalists, designers, musicians, and more. The playlist is great for both creative and non-creative professionals dealing with workout.

You should also check out a TEDx talk by productivity expert Allan Ting. Ting himself was waylaid by burnout before turning it around. And in this talk, he shares three simple steps to bounce back from burnout.

Finally, therapist Kati Morton has a special Burnout Playlist on her YouTube channel for the A-Z on it. In successive videos, she discusses the science of burnout, who is more likely to get burned out, and other related topics. It’s a nice distillation of the ideas you’ll read in most other articles and guides about the subject.

Meditate Your Way to Calmness

As you’ll see from the recommendations, every expert says meditation helps. It’s a common practice to bring some calmness to your life when going through burnout, anxiety, stress, or other forms of mental fatigue. Start with these free meditation apps to beat stress and anxiety, it’s a must-have tool in fighting burnout.

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