Are you burned out? Take this quiz

Clinical burnout: prolonged exhaustion, mental distance, and persistent negative feelings

Burnout isn’t just stress—it’s a pervasive feeling of exhaustion that can start in the workplace and seep into everyday life. It causes feelings of dread and cynicism about work tasks. On top of emotional distress, there can be physical symptoms and a tendency towards addictive behavior.

One-third of early- and mid-career workers have considered quitting due to stress

In 2024, around half of all full-time employees polled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness reported experiencing burnout at their jobs. Around a third of all employees ages 18 to 49 had considered quitting their jobs due to workplace stress.

Burnout became a serious area of study in the 1970s

Psychology professor Christina Maslach developed the first tool to assess the presence of burnout, focusing on six contributing factors within workplaces: an overwhelming workload, a lack of control over one’s work, insufficient reward for one’s efforts, interpersonal conflict, a sense of unfairness, and a mismatch between individual and organizational values.

What happens to your brain when you burn out?

You've probably heard of burnout, also known as the feeling of exhaustion that happens after a long period of being overwhelmed or stressed. It's often associated with work and careers, but other parts of life, like parenting, can cause burnout, too. Scientists are figuring out what happens, biochemically speaking, in the brain when burnout hits—and spoiler alert, it includes a neurotransmitter called glutamate. Watch this video to learn more.

Easy resets for stress reduction

Individual solutions for burnout, often called “self-care,” can be helpful for managing stress. Harvard researcher Aditi Nerurkar’s 2024 book The Five Resets details a road map for burnout recovery. In this interview she suggests, among other tactics, gaining focus on what matters the most in one’s life, taking breaks from both work and the internet, and making time for practices that strengthen the mind-body connection.

Take a quiz to discover your brain care score

Each year, nearly 800,000 Americans have a stroke. With such a high occurrence rate, you may be asking yourself what you could do now to prevent a future stroke. Researchers at Harvard collaborated to answer this question by coming up with a "Brain Care" scoring system. Take the quiz to learn the quality of your brain health today and pick up helpful insights to lower your risk of stroke and dementia well into the future.

How artificial intelligence, which detects patterns, can identify burnout

Researchers are training AI to detect stress-related symptoms, helping physicians and other medical workers recognize and reduce stress from overwork and potentially avoid burnout.

Many dating app users are beginning to suffer from 'dating app burnout'

For younger generations, dating apps have become a primary avenue for creating romantic connections—leaving some users fatigued and contributing to increased feelings of loneliness.

Take a bankruptcy self-filing quiz

If a debtor is considering filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it may be tempting to take a do-it-yourself approach to avoid attorney or preparer fees. However, experts caution that this could come back to bite filers. A quiz can help would-be filers explore whether their cases are complex enough to necessitate a lawyer.

Political typology quiz

Where do you fit in the political typology? Take this quiz to find out which political typology best matches your views. Sixteen questions serve to filter political views across nine typology groups. These groups include: Progressive Left;...

How to cope with postvacation blues

While it might seem counterintuitive, new research shows that experiencing exhaustion or a lack of motivation postvacation is fairly common. While travel itself can, of course, be tiring, the contrast between vacation freedom and endless Slack messages can be even more so. This article explores why the return-to-work existential crisis happens, and offers advice for beating the post-vaycay blues. Read it here.

Test your emotional intelligence with this quiz

Emotional intelligence is the instinct and art of understanding feelings: both your own and those of others. Studies demonstrate people with high emotional intelligence often succeed in leadership positions, as they can better serve the real needs...

Why the Myers-Briggs test is pure entertainment

The world's most popular personality test isn't used by academic psychologists—but hundreds of companies and thousands of colleges use it to place workers and students. Here's why it's so popular and likely overused.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

See the UCLA Loneliness Scale, often used to measure global loneliness

This 20-question survey, first established in the late 1970s and subsequently revised and often adapted, aims to measure the subjective experience of loneliness. Respondents rate various items on a scale of 1 (Never) to 4 (Often). One revision of the test (not included here) offers an abbreviated three-question version that focuses on how often you feel companionship, left out, and isolated.

How to know if you're a workaholic

Are you a workaholic, or do you simply enjoy work? As it turns out, there's a big difference between putting in long hours at the office because you enjoy your job and actually having a work addiction. If you're reading this on hour 12 of your 14-hour workday and wondering which category you fall into, peruse this article to find out.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Could this pseudo-psychedelic VR experience decrease symptoms of depression?

Researchers report that virtual reality and psychedelics may be leave users with similar insights and therapeutic benefits. Try out this free psychedelic virtual reality experience to see if this holds true for you. According to the program’s creators, a study into the efficacy of this 45-minute experience indicates it may help alleviate symptoms of mild to moderate depression.

Are you a digital hoarder? There are four types, actually

Digital hoarding: the phenomenon where people accumulate excessive digital clutter, like thousands of emails, hundreds of open browser tabs, and unused apps on their devices. This behavior has been associated with increased stress levels and potential negative impacts on mental well-being. Are you a digital hoarder? Find out the four types here.

Determine your carbon footprint with this web tool

This tool from the Environmental Protection Agency calculates a user's carbon footprint based on their zip code, household size, and emission factors involving home energy, transportation, and water production.

Explore an interactive map showing what makes people happy

Using 10,000 responses collected from people around the world about what makes them happy, this map offers insights into how relationships, finances, purpose, and small treats all contribute to a person's contentment. Recent data suggests that young people today are less happy than those in previous generations, indicating a need to reflect on what really matters in life.

Stress affects different animals in different, but useful, ways

Animals feel stress when they experience actual dangers—such as a zebra chased by a lion. Humans often feel stress from worries, memories, or even thoughts about problems that may occur in the future. For this reason, animals tend to experience stress in short, intense bursts. Conversely, people can feel stressed for long periods, which can eventually be harmful to their health.

How much is your parental mental load worth?

At-home genetic testing results commonly led users to healthier lifestyles

Italian research that aimed to investigate what people do longer-term after receiving direct-to-consumer genetic test results indicated that whether the results were positive or negative, people tended to adopt a healthier diet after receiving the results, and they'd still maintained it a year after receiving their results. Some users also reported an overall reduction in stress over their health concerns. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

This site sums up your entire life in statistics

If you’re able to read this statement, a lot has happened since you were born…and these statistics summarize what you have lived through! Input your birthday to find out about how many times your heart has beaten, how many breaths you’ve...

Having five of nine key symptoms constitutes a major depression

Before professional standards were adopted, practitioners used varying criteria to diagnose mental health disorders. By the 1970s, more objective lists were organized, culminating in this list of polythetic criteria—a list of symptoms where no single criterion is required, but a minimum number must be present.

A full crash course in psychology

This 40-episode crash course series mirrors the curriculum of an advanced high school class on the psychology with well-known creators the Green brothers. Browse each roughly 10-minute episode or watch them all.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

About 12.5% of US adults experience a phobia in their lifetime, a diagnosis that hinges on the intense fear interfering with daily life and persisting for at least six months.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.