Burnout Cost

A burnout cost calculator quantifies the financial impact of overwork: lost productivity, health costs, recovery time off, lower decision quality, and the increased risk of forced career changes. Burnout is usually framed as a wellbeing issue, but it has a hard dollar cost too — recovery from severe burnout often takes 6–18 months and can include therapy, lost income, and reduced earning potential.

Enter your salary, weekly hours worked above a sustainable baseline, and how long you've been at this pace. The calculator estimates productivity loss (research suggests output per hour drops sharply above 50 hours/week), health-related costs, and the financial cost of likely recovery time. Use the result to make the business case to yourself or your manager for sustainable hours.

Working 60 hours instead of 40 doesn't deliver 50% more output — productivity per hour drops sharply after about 50 hours per week, and quality of decisions falls even faster. The compounding cost of burnout — therapy, time off, lost promotions, and in serious cases a forced career break — frequently wipes out years of any 'extra' earnings. Sustainable performance over five years almost always beats heroic performance over six months. If your employer can't make the numbers work without overwork, the business model has a problem and you're paying for it with your health.