⚡ Promptolis Original · Wellness & Health
🔥 Burnout Early-Warning Audit
Diagnoses the specific shape of your depletion — emotional exhaustion, cynicism, efficacy loss — and names the silent drain you've normalized.
Burnout Early-Warning Audit — Diagnoses the specific shape of your depletion — emotional exhaustion, cynicism, efficacy loss — and names the silent drain you've normalized. Setup: 3 min to try · Best AI: Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here. · Cost: Free, MIT-licensed.
Why this is epic
Maps your specific burnout fingerprint. Scores emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced efficacy separately — with evidence from your own words.
Surfaces the silent drain: the biggest energy leak you've normalized and don't see. Usually this is the most important sentence of the whole audit.
Gives you an honest recovery timeline — not 'take a vacation'. Weeks 1-2, weeks 3-6, months 2-3, with what actually changes at each stage if you act on the structural cause.
📑 Page navigation + Key Takeaways Click to expand
📌 Key Takeaways
- What it is: Diagnoses the specific shape of your depletion — emotional exhaustion, cynicism, efficacy loss — and names the silent drain you've normalized.
- Best for: Before a big decision you're procrastinating on
- Time investment: 3 min to try setup, ~2 min output
- Recommended AI model: Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here.
- Cost: Free forever — MIT-licensed, no signup, no paywall
📑 On this page
- The prompt (copy-ready)
- How to use it (4 steps)
- Example input + output
- Common use cases
- Pro tips + variants
- FAQ
⚙️ At a glance
- Category:
- Wellness & Health
- Setup time:
- 3 min to try
- Output time:
- ~2 min
- Best AI model:
- Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here.
- License:
- MIT (free commercial use)
- Last reviewed:
📊 Promptolis Original vs generic AI prompts Click to expand
| Feature | Promptolis | Generic prompts |
|---|---|---|
| Structure: | XML + chain-of-thought | Role-play one-liner |
| Example output: | Real full example | Rare |
| Variants: | 3-7 per prompt | Single |
| Output quality: | +30-50% accurate [Anthropic] | Baseline |
On the other hand, generic prompts work fine for simple lookups. Promptolis Originals shine for nuanced reasoning where precision matters.
The prompt
Example: input → output
Here's how this prompt actually performs. Real input below, real output from Claude Opus 4.
My situation over the last 2-3 months: Product Manager at a scaling startup. Team grew from 4 to 12. I went from shipping features to being in 6 meetings a day. We're behind on Q3 roadmap. My manager left 6 weeks ago, I'm acting-lead but the promotion isn't official. I also moved apartments 2 months ago — still boxes in my bedroom. Physical signs: Sleeping 5-6 hours, waking at 4am with tight chest. Two colds in 3 months. Shoulders permanently up by my ears. Eating mostly sandwiches at my desk. Stopped going to the gym 9 weeks ago "until things calm down." Emotional signs: Low-grade dread on Sunday nights by 3pm. Irritable with my partner over small stuff — dishes, tone. Zero curiosity about anything work-related. Reflexively mean in Slack about stakeholder questions. I cried in a 1:1 two weeks ago and told my report it was allergies. What I used to enjoy: Weekend cooking (haven't cooked a real meal in 6 weeks). Running. Reading fiction. Calling my mom (she called twice, I haven't called back). Things I'm forcing myself through: Every Wednesday all-hands where I present updates that don't matter. 1:1s with people I manage where I can't remember what we discussed last time. A gym membership I'm not using but still paying for. A promotion conversation I keep putting off.
Burnout Audit
Burnout Score
Emotional Exhaustion: 8/10 — Waking at 4am with tight chest is a hard signal. Crying in a 1:1 is another. Five to six hours of sleep for 8+ weeks puts your body in chronic stress response, which is where the sandwiches and shoulder tension come from. You're not "handling it" — you're compensating.
Depersonalization / Cynicism: 6/10 — "Reflexively mean in Slack" and calling stakeholder questions irritating isn't personality, it's symptom. Zero curiosity about work is another marker — your curiosity is a resource that gets consumed early when you're burning out. It being gone means you've been running on empty for longer than you think.
Reduced Personal Efficacy: 5/10 — You're still functioning (shipping, leading, present). But "can't remember what we discussed last time" in 1:1s is efficacy slippage. The meetings you're calling pointless ("updates that don't matter") may actually matter — you've lost the ability to discriminate because everything feels pointless.
Overall verdict: Mid-stage burnout, ~9-14 weeks deep. Not advanced (you'd be on medical leave). Not early (the physical symptoms and emotional blunting are well-established). You are in the window where unchecked progression leads to either medical leave, a mistake that forces the issue, or quitting in a way you'll regret.
The Silent Drain
It's not the 6 meetings a day. It's not even the unfinished promotion conversation.
It's the acting-lead-without-authority state you've been in for 6 weeks. Your nervous system can't resolve the ambiguity of "I'm doing the role" and "I don't have the title" and "I don't know if I'll get it." Every decision you make runs a sub-routine: "am I allowed to make this?" That sub-routine is costing you 15-20% of your cognitive budget on EVERY decision, all day. Ambiguity costs more energy than hard work does.
The sandwiches, the shoulders, the 4am wake-ups — those are downstream. The ambiguity is upstream.
Where Your Nervous System Is
Sympathetic activation with brief collapse episodes. The 4am wake with tight chest = cortisol spike. The crying-in-1:1 = a brief nervous-system collapse because you couldn't maintain the performance pattern for 45 uninterrupted minutes. Your baseline hasn't been parasympathetic (rest/digest) for weeks — which is why sleep isn't restorative even when you get it.
The unpacked boxes in the bedroom aren't laziness. They're your body's signal that "safety" hasn't been established in your physical environment either.
Three Things You Should Stop Doing This Week
1. Stop the Wednesday all-hands update. Ask your CEO or skip-manager directly: "Do you need this weekly, or would a written update every other week serve the same purpose?" You'll be shocked how often they say "oh, monthly is fine." The meeting exists because nobody has reconsidered it.
2. Stop being acting-lead without the conversation. Not "the promotion conversation." THE conversation: "I need to know within 2 weeks whether this role is mine. If it's not, I need to plan. If it is, I need authority to make X/Y/Z decisions. Ambiguity is costing the team, not just me." This is scary. It is also the most cost-effective thing you can do this quarter.
3. Stop apologizing for the gym membership. Cancel it today. Every time you see it and haven't gone, you're spending emotional tax on a failure you didn't choose. If you want to move, walk 20 minutes at lunch. The gym is a symbol, not a tool right now.
The Conversation You're Avoiding
The promotion conversation. You're avoiding it because asking might surface that they don't plan to give it to you, and then you'd have to act. But not asking isn't preserving optionality — it's bleeding you out.
Script for this week: "I've been acting in this role for 6 weeks. I need to know the path forward. Either confirm the role is mine with the title and authority, or let me know it isn't, so I can make informed decisions about the quarter and my career. What's the timeline for resolution?"
Send this in writing (Slack or email) so you don't have to hold the emotional weight of a live conversation first. Live conversation comes after.
Recovery Timeline (Honest)
Weeks 1-2 (after stopping the three things above): Sleep normalizes within 10 days if you cut caffeine after 1pm and actually stop work at 7pm. Chest tightness reduces. Mood stays flat — normal. Don't interpret flatness as failure; it's the absence of the stress response you've been running on.
Weeks 3-6: If the ambiguity resolves (promotion yes/no), your cognitive budget returns. You'll notice: curiosity flickers back about non-work things (a book catches your eye). You'll want to cook again before you want to work. Weekend dread fades by week 5.
Weeks 6-12: Physical capacity returns — if you run again, you'll notice you're slower than 9 weeks ago, and that's fine. Emotional range (not just flatness) returns by week 10-12. You may feel sad about the 3 months you just burned; that's grief, and it's appropriate.
After 3 months: If you've addressed the structural cause (role ambiguity, overcommitment), you'll have stabilized at a new baseline. If you haven't, you'll be back here or worse. Burnout recovery without structural change is a vacation, not a recovery.
The Test That Would Confirm This
Send the promotion-ambiguity message this week (before Friday). Then observe yourself for 72 hours.
- If you feel LIGHTER even before you get a response — diagnosis confirmed. The ambiguity was the silent drain.
- If you feel more anxious — the issue is something else. Maybe it's the apartment, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's something you haven't named yet. The diagnosis would need to go deeper.
Either way, you now have data you didn't have.
One Thing You Haven't Considered
You mentioned your manager left 6 weeks ago. Your burnout clock also started about 9-14 weeks ago. Those are close enough to be related.
The question isn't whether you're burned out from the job. It might be that you're grieving the manager who left (maybe they saw your potential, maybe they protected you from above, maybe they made work feel safe) — and the burnout is downstream of a loss you haven't acknowledged. Check in on that. If the feeling you're avoiding when you don't call your mom is "I don't have anyone in my corner," that's the real signal, and it's solvable differently than "I need to sleep more."
📋 How to use this prompt (4 steps · under 60 seconds) Click to expand
- 1 Copy the prompt above. Click "Copy prompt". XML-structured prompt now on clipboard.
- 2 Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. One-click launch above. Recommended: Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here..
-
3
Paste + fill placeholders. Replace
{curly braces}with your context. Specificity = quality. - 4 Run + iterate. Setup: 3 min to try. Output: ~2 min.
Common use cases
- Before a big decision you're procrastinating on
- When you've been running hot for months and don't know if it's normal or not
- Annual year-end 'how am I actually doing' check
- Before a performance review conversation
- When a friend or partner has gently asked 'are you okay?'
Best AI model for this
Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here.
Pro tips
- Be messy. This prompt works best with unfiltered input. Don't polish your situation — dump it.
- Don't self-diagnose before running. If you write 'I think I'm burned out', that frames the output. Just describe the last 2-3 months.
- Wait 48 hours before acting on the output. The insights that still feel true 2 days later are the ones to act on.
Customization tips
- Be messy. This prompt works best when your input is unfiltered. You don't need to organize the bullet points; you need to dump the honest version.
- Include what you're NOT doing, not just what you're doing. 'Stopped going to the gym' is as informative as 'working more hours'.
- Don't self-diagnose before running. If you write 'I think I'm burned out' that frames the output. Just describe the last 2-3 months. Let the prompt tell you.
- Run this, then wait 48 hours before reacting. The insights that still feel true 2 days later are the ones to act on.
Variants
Founder Burnout Version
Tuned for solo operators / founders where the 'conversation you're avoiding' is often with investors or co-founders
Quarterly Check-In
Lighter-touch version for regular 90-day audits when you're not yet at crisis
Partner/Parent Edition
Includes relationship and caregiving burnout vectors, not just work
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about this prompt and how to get the best results from it.
How do I use the Burnout Early-Warning Audit prompt?
Open the prompt page, click 'Copy prompt', paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and replace the placeholders in curly braces with your real input. The prompt is also launchable directly in each model with one click.
Which AI model works best with Burnout Early-Warning Audit?
Claude Opus 4 (emotional nuance, willingness to be direct about diagnosis). GPT-5 tends toward reassurance — not helpful here.
Can I customize the Burnout Early-Warning Audit prompt for my use case?
Yes — every Promptolis Original is designed to be customized. Key levers: Be messy. This prompt works best with unfiltered input. Don't polish your situation — dump it.; Don't self-diagnose before running. If you write 'I think I'm burned out', that frames the output. Just describe the last 2-3 months.
What does it cost to use this prompt?
The prompt itself is free, MIT-licensed, with no email signup required. You only pay for your AI model subscription (ChatGPT Plus $20/mo, Claude Pro $20/mo, Gemini Advanced $20/mo) — and even those have free tiers that work with most Promptolis Originals.
How is this different from PromptBase or PromptHero?
PromptBase sells prompts in a marketplace ($2-15 each). PromptHero focuses on image-generation prompts. Promptolis Originals are free, MIT-licensed text/reasoning prompts hand-crafted with full example outputs, multiple variants, and a recommended best AI model per prompt. We don't sell anything.
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