Energy Drain Pattern

What tends to take the most out of me — at work, with people and in everyday life?

Twenty-four statements about where your energy tends to go — at work, with people, and in everyday life.

24 statements · About 4 minutesOur estimate

Infeee Exploratory Assessment

What it looks at

Six patterns, each measured on its own. You’ll see which came through most in your answers — never a type, a total or a verdict:

Emotional OverloadYou may notice moods quickly, feel other people’s stress in your own body, and stay with it long after a conversation ends.
Responsibility OverloadYou may be the one who notices, remembers and holds things together, and find it hard to rest while anything is unfinished.
Social DepletionTime with people can be good and still leave you depleted. Being “on” may cost more than the task itself.
Decision FatigueMany small decisions and unfinished questions may keep circling, leaving less for what matters. Late in the day, even simple choices can feel heavy.
Meaning LossYou may have plenty of energy for what you believe in and very little for what feels pointless. Some days can feel like going through the motions.
Boundary LeakageYour days may fill with other people’s small asks, messages and check-ins, and time for yourself may come with guilt attached.

What it does not measure

It is not a burnout test. It can’t tell you whether you are burned out, depressed or unwell.
It doesn’t measure how resilient or hard-working you are.
It doesn’t measure people-pleasing or saying no in general — People-Pleasing & Speaking Up looks at that separately.
It is not a diagnosis and not a burnout assessment. It describes where energy may be leaking, not whether anything is wrong with you.
Tiredness has many causes, including physical ones. If you’ve felt exhausted for a long time, it’s worth talking with a doctor.
It isn’t a type. Different drains can matter in different seasons of life.
No pattern is better than another, and there are no percentiles or norms.

What you’ll see

You’ll see the pattern that came through most in your answers — and any pattern close behind — with its strengths, what to watch for, what it may be protecting and what it may cost, a coaching question and one gentle experiment. All six patterns are shown on their own lines, without numbers. Close or tied patterns are shown together, never forced into one.

Evidence and research basis

Infeee Exploratory Assessment

An original Infeee questionnaire grounded in published research, but not yet tested for reliability or validity. There are no norms or comparison groups.

How Infeee labels evidence

Infeee Exploratory Assessment: research-informed, not yet validated.

The statements, patterns and descriptions were written by Infeee for coaching reflection. They draw on research about exhaustion, recovery, emotional contagion and meaningful work, but no published questionnaire is used or adapted. This is not a burnout measure and has not been validated.

These are new, Infeee-written statements. They have not yet been tested for reliability or validity, so treat the result as a reflection prompt, not a measurement.

With four statements per pattern, small differences between patterns don’t mean much. That’s why close patterns are shown together.

“Decision fatigue” is used here as an everyday description. The lab research on willpower running out is contested.

Sources (11)

World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases.Burn-out is described as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition — and this test does not assess it.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422.Exhaustion at work and six areas of work life that can feed it, including workload and a mismatch with one’s values.
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.Demands that take energy, and resources that give it back.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96–100.How people “catch” the emotions of those around them.
Singer, T., & Klimecki, O. M. (2014). Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 24(18), R875–R878.Distinguishes sharing another’s distress from caring about it — background for the Emotional Overload pattern.
Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204–221.Recovery experiences such as switching off from work and relaxation.
Leikas, S., & Ilmarinen, V.-J. (2017). Happy now, tired later? Extraverted and conscientious behavior are related to immediate mood gains, but to later fatigue. Journal of Personality, 85(5), 603–615.Sociable behaviour lifted mood in the moment but went with more tiredness a few hours later.
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.Unfinished goals kept intruding on attention, and making a specific plan reduced that.
Steger, M. F., Dik, B. J., & Duffy, R. D. (2012). Measuring meaningful work: The Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI). Journal of Career Assessment, 20(3), 322–337.Meaningful work as a distinct experience from simply liking one’s job.
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 107–110.Interrupted work was done faster, but with more stress and frustration.
Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L. D., Alberts, H., et al. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546–573.A large replication that did not find the laboratory “willpower depletion” effect — why this test treats “decision fatigue” as an everyday experience, not a proven mechanism.

About this topic

The World Health Organization describes burn-out as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. This test does not assess it; it looks at everyday sources of drain.

Burnout research links exhaustion to several areas of work life, including workload and a mismatch between the work and a person’s values — background for the Responsibility Overload and Meaning Loss patterns.

People can “catch” the emotions of those around them, and sharing someone’s distress is different from caring about it — background for the Emotional Overload pattern.

In one diary study, sociable behaviour lifted mood in the moment but went with more tiredness a few hours later — background for the Social Depletion pattern.

Unfinished goals tend to keep pulling at attention, and making a concrete plan reduced that in experiments — background for the Decision Fatigue pattern’s “decide once” experiment.

Sources (5)

Your privacy

Your answers are processed in your browser and aren’t saved — not on this device and not on our servers.

When you finish, you can choose to add the result to your Pattern Map. It’s saved only in this browser on this device, and you can remove it at any time.

Before you start

24 statements · about 4 minutes. This is a self-reflection tool, not a diagnosis, and not a burnout test. Your answers stay on this device.

Instructions

Think about the last few months, at work and outside it. For each statement, choose how much it sounds like you. There are no right answers.

Answers

Not like me · A little like me · Somewhat like me · Quite like me · Very much like me.

Every statement needs an answer before your result can be shown. You can go back to change an answer, or stop at any time — nothing is saved along the way.

This is a reflection tool, not a diagnosis. If you feel unsafe or need urgent help, contact your local emergency or crisis support service.

Ready when you are.

Begin assessment