Rate your workload reality
Move each slider. Higher isn’t always “better” — it depends on whether your load is matched by control, recovery, and boundaries.
Workload Balance Tool
A fast, non‑clinical workload self‑check. Rate the “load vs recovery” reality of your week, then get a 0–100 Workload Health Score with a simple rebalance plan you can use immediately.
⏱️~45 seconds
📊0–100 score + interpretation
🗓️Weekly rebalance plan
💾Save snapshots locally
📚 How it works
The scoring formula (simple, explainable, practical)
The Workload Balance Tool turns your 1–10 ratings into a single 0–100 score. Some sliders are “capacity builders” (higher usually helps), and some are “capacity taxes” (higher usually hurts). We invert the taxes, combine everything with weights, then scale to 0–100.
Capacity builders (higher = better)
- Control & autonomy
- Deep focus time
- Recovery & rest
- Boundaries
- Support
Capacity taxes (higher = worse → inverted)
- Workload load (volume/urgency)
- Meeting pressure (fragmentation)
- After-hours work (always-on)
Weights
- Recovery: 20%
- Load (inverted): 18%
- Boundaries: 14%
- Control: 12%
- Focus time: 12%
- Meetings (inverted): 10%
- After-hours (inverted): 8%
- Support: 6%
Why these weights? In practice, recovery and load dominate the day-to-day experience, while boundaries prevent “quiet expansion” of work into every space. Meetings and after-hours are common capacity leaks, and support matters — but support helps most when you also have clarity and boundaries.
🗺️ Your weekly plan
A simple rebalance recipe
After you calculate your score, you’ll get a short plan. It follows a basic sequence: reduce the biggest leak, protect a focus block, and schedule recovery. This works because it changes the system, not just your willpower.
Plan components
- One “Stop doing” (drop, delay, delegate, or downgrade).
- One “Protect” block (focus time; meeting guardrails).
- One “Recover” action (rest, sleep, movement, decompression).
- One “Boundary script” (a sentence you can copy/paste).
If you want it to go viral inside a team: save your score, share the snapshot, and run a “rebalance retro” once a week. Teams often don’t need more effort — they need fewer collisions.
🧾 Full explanation
Workload balance: the hidden math behind “too much”
Most people think of workload as “how many tasks are on my plate.” That’s part of it — but it’s not the full picture. Two people can have the same number of tasks and feel completely different. The difference is usually capacity (how much you can realistically do with your current energy and time) and friction (how often your work gets interrupted, reworked, or expanded).
This tool uses a simple idea: workload is sustainable when load is matched by control, focus time, recovery, boundaries, and support. When those supports drop, the same load starts to feel crushing. When those supports rise, people can handle busy seasons without burning out.
The sliders are designed to be both easy to answer and actionable. Each dimension maps to a lever you can pull:
Load (capacity tax)
Load includes volume and urgency. High load isn’t “bad” — launches happen, seasons spike, and some roles are naturally intense. But load becomes dangerous when it’s high and persistent, especially when you have little control over sequencing, little focus time to execute, and insufficient recovery. In the score, load is inverted to reflect the idea that lower load creates more breathing room.
Control & autonomy
Control means you can shape the work: negotiate scope, sequence tasks, push back on unrealistic timelines, or decide what “good enough” looks like. Low control turns your day into reactive firefighting. Even a small increase in control — like defining priorities each morning or clarifying decision rights — can dramatically reduce stress.
Deep focus time
Focus time is the difference between thinking work and status work. Many roles require uninterrupted time to build, write, analyze, code, design, or plan. When focus time collapses, tasks stretch across days and multiply. Protecting even one 60–90 minute block can raise your output without increasing total hours — which is why focus is weighted meaningfully in the formula.
Recovery & rest
Recovery is not just “sleep more.” It’s the ability to come down from pressure, reset your nervous system, and replenish energy. Without recovery, your baseline gets worse: small tasks feel heavy, emotional resilience drops, and decision quality declines. Recovery is weighted highest because it’s the foundation for every other capacity lever.
Boundaries
Boundaries are the rules that protect your attention and time: start/stop times, response windows, scope rules, and “what not to do” lists. Weak boundaries allow work to expand into every gap. Strong boundaries don’t require being rude — they require clarity. This tool generates a boundary script you can copy, because a well-worded sentence can save hours.
Support & teamwork
Support is a multiplier: access to help, coverage, review, shared context, and a team that can absorb spikes. When support is low, you carry the entire load alone. When support is high, you can delegate, escalate decisions, and prevent bottlenecks. Support has a lower weight than recovery and load because support helps most when you also have clear priorities and boundaries — but it still matters.
Meetings (capacity tax)
Meetings themselves aren’t the enemy; unclear meetings are. Meeting pressure usually means your day is chopped into small fragments, leaving too little focus time. In the score, meetings are inverted. If meeting pressure is high, your plan will likely suggest: shorten, combine, batch, or default-to-async for at least one recurring slot this week.
After-hours work (capacity tax)
After-hours work is a signal that your system is leaking: either the load is too high, your schedule is too fragmented, or boundaries are too soft. Sometimes after-hours is temporary; sometimes it becomes normalized. The tool treats it as a tax and suggests a specific boundary to reverse it.
Under the hood, the math is intentionally transparent. Each slider is 1–10. For “tax” sliders (load, meetings,
after-hours), we compute a positive version by flipping it: inverted = 11 - value. Then we apply the
weights, producing a weighted average that still lives on a 1–10 scale. Finally, we convert that to a 0–100 score:
((avg - 1) / 9) * 100. This means:
- 0–39 is a red zone: your system is asking for relief.
- 40–59 is mixed: you can stabilize by fixing one leak.
- 60–79 is workable: protect the supports so you don’t slide.
- 80–100 is sustainable: maintain, don’t over-optimize.
The most useful part is not the number — it’s the pattern. If your score is low because load is high, you might need to drop or renegotiate work. If your score is low because meetings are high, you might need to reclaim focus time. If your score is low because recovery is low, the fix may be to schedule true recovery before adding any new tasks.
That’s why the tool generates a weekly plan based on your lowest two levers. It’s not trying to be “perfect.” It’s trying to be actionable in five minutes. If you improve your weakest lever by just one point and hold it there for two weeks, your workload experience often improves more than expected.
If you want to use this at work, consider doing it as a team exercise: each person runs the tool privately, shares only their top two friction points (not their whole score), and then you pick one team-level change (meeting cleanup, clearer intake rules, or better on-call rotation). Teams often discover that the root cause isn’t effort — it’s system design.
Again: this is not medical advice. But it is a useful mirror. When you can name the leak, you can fix the leak.
❓ FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
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Is this a burnout test?
No. It’s a workload balance snapshot. Burnout is complex and can involve health, values, and long-term context. Use this as a practical check to spot overload patterns early.
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How often should I use it?
Weekly is the sweet spot. Use “Last 7 days,” save the snapshot, and focus on improving your lowest lever by 1 point. Trends matter more than a single reading.
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Why do you invert load, meetings, and after-hours?
Because they usually reduce capacity. Inverting keeps the scoring consistent: higher “positive” values always raise the overall score.
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What if my score is low but I can’t change the load?
Then change the supports. If load is fixed, focus on recovery, boundaries, and meetings. Even small changes like batching meetings or setting a response window can improve your day dramatically.
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Can I use this for students or personal projects?
Yes. Replace “meetings” with “classes / commitments” and “after-hours work” with “late-night studying.” The same logic applies: protect focus blocks and schedule recovery.
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Do you store my inputs?
No. The tool runs in your browser. If you hit “Save,” only the score snapshot is stored locally on your device.
🔗 Explore
Keep building clarity with related tools
These tools pair well with workload planning and decision clarity.
🛡️ Safety
Use the score responsibly
This calculator is designed to support self‑reflection and better planning — not to diagnose health conditions. If you’re facing ongoing exhaustion, anxiety, depression, or physical symptoms, consider speaking with a qualified professional.
A simple weekly ritual
- Run “Last 7 days” every Friday (or Sunday) and save the result.
- Pick one lever to improve by 1 point next week.
- Repeat for 4 weeks and look for direction, not perfection.
MaximCalculator builds fast, human-friendly tools. Always treat results as educational self‑reflection, and double-check important decisions with qualified professionals.