Should I Quit Methodology

Should I Quit? scores three things from 26 questions: burnout (six questions on exhaustion and seven on disengagement), meaning at work (ten statements) and intent to leave (three statements). It then runs 10,000 simulated versions of staying in your job and 10,000 of leaving it, built from ten planning inputs you give: how hard you expect a job search to be, your current pay, the pay range you expect in a new role, your months of savings, your essential monthly expenses, the raises you expect in each path, the burnout relief and the meaning boost you expect from a new job, and the horizon. It also shows one of six patterns read from today’s scores, three next steps matched to that pattern, and an optional regret prompt. The test page shows the pattern, its line and the share of runs in which quitting came out ahead free and opens the rest with its report, The Quit Ledger; a result shown with the support resources shows whole, the support resources first.

It does not tell you whether to quit. The simulation shows how your own assumptions play out under fixed rules that LifeByLogic chose; it is not a forecast, and no study has checked it against what happened to people who stayed or left. The questions are LifeByLogic’s own and have not been tested for reliability or validity, and there are no norms, so the scores describe your answers, not where you stand against other people.

The scores and the simulation are computed in your browser, and your money figures are not part of the result you can choose to save. If you buy the paid report, checkout sends your figures as shares of your current pay, never as dollar amounts; section v says what it sends.

The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 describes burn-out as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition: the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with three dimensions — exhaustion, mental distance from or cynicism about one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy (World Health Organization, 2019). This tool measures the first two, which burnout research most often treats as its core (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter, 2001; Demerouti et al., 2001). It does not measure professional efficacy.

Intent to leave matters because, in a large review of turnover studies, intentions to quit were among the best predictors of who actually left (Griffeth, Hom & Gaertner, 2000), though many people who intend to leave stay. Mobley (1977) described the steps between dissatisfaction and quitting, from thinking about leaving to searching, comparing alternatives and deciding; the intent statements ask about the first of those steps and about expecting to search.

Meaning at work is studied as more than liking a job. Rosso, Dekas and Wrzesniewski (2010) review where meaningful work comes from, and Steger, Dik and Duffy (2012) measure it in three parts: positive meaning in work, meaning-making through work, and motivation to serve a greater good.

A stay-or-go decision also turns on money and time, which no questionnaire captures. The simulation puts your figures for pay, raises, expenses and search length next to your scores, so that you can see which assumption the comparison depends on.

Every question and statement was written by LifeByLogic. Answers use five-point frequency, intensity or agreement scales scored 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100, the scoring convention of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (Kristensen et al., 2005). The two burnout parts are named exhaustion and disengagement after Demerouti and colleagues (2001). The ten meaning statements follow the three-part structure of the Work and Meaning Inventory (Steger, Dik & Duffy, 2012), four, three and three statements with one reverse-scored, in LifeByLogic’s own words. The tool uses no item from those instruments, from the Maslach Burnout Inventory or from any published turnover-intention scale.

In October 2026 each question was compared with the published items it most resembles. Seven that followed a published item’s wording too closely were rewritten: one disengagement question, three meaning statements and all three intent statements.

Each answer is scored 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100. Two items are reverse-scored (100 minus the answer): the disengagement question asking how often you still feel interested and absorbed in your work, and the meaning statement saying the work would matter to almost no one if it stopped. The table gives each score and its bands. All bands are the tool’s own cut-points. The burnout cut-points of 50 and 75 echo a convention some studies use with the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (Creedy et al., 2017, counted 50 or more as burnout), but these questions are not that inventory, so the bands are rough labels, not clinical levels.

When burnout is 75 or more, or the question about reaching the limit of what you can handle is answered often or always, the results show support resources first, before the headline numbers, and hide the newsletter sign-up form.

Each of the 10,000 runs plays out one version of staying and one version of leaving, year by year. Both paths follow the same rules except where your answers differ: the quit path adds the job search without pay, the salary range you expect and the relief and boost you expect from a new job. Every fixed number in the table is LifeByLogic’s own choice; none comes from a study of people who stayed or left.

The share of runs. The percentage at the top of the results is the share of the 10,000 paired runs in which the quit path’s life-quality score is higher than the stay path’s, with ties counting half. The same comparison is shown for total pay, average burnout (lower counts as better) and average meaning. At 60% or more the results say quitting came out ahead more often, at 40% or less that staying did, and in between that neither path came out clearly ahead; those thresholds are the tool’s own.

The percentage describes how your assumptions play out under these rules. It is not the chance that leaving will turn out better for you. With identical expectations for both paths (no relief, no boost, the same pay and expenses covered), the life-quality comparison comes out close to 50%, and the quit path pays less in most runs because of the search months.

The paid report. Right under your pattern, the results offer The Quit Ledger, a paid PDF report. The rest of the results (both paths’ life-quality scores, the pay, burnout and meaning on each path, how the runs spread, which path came out ahead, your pattern read beside your scores and three next steps) shows under a blur, with a line on what each part holds, and a box lists five things only the report writes out, among them how many of your seven assumptions would change your answer on their own. Buying the report from the results opens every part there. When the results show support resources (burnout 75 or more, or the question about reaching your limit answered often or always), they show whole, with no report, price or sign-up form, and checkout refuses such a result. If you buy the report, checkout sends your 26 answers, your search difficulty, the years compared, your raises, the relief and boost you expect, your months of savings, and your pay range and expenses as shares of your current pay; your current pay and every dollar amount stay in your browser. The report’s server plays the same 10,000 runs again from the same seed, so its shares match the ones you saw, and finds the values at which each of the seven assumptions (search difficulty, new-job pay, the raise where you are, the new-job raise, the relief, the boost and the years compared) would change the answer.

The six patterns. Your pattern is read from today’s scores and your months of savings, not from the simulation. The rules are checked in this order, and the first that fits is shown: Crystallized (burnout 75 or more, meaning under 50, six months of savings or more); Golden-Handcuffed (burnout 75 or more, under three months of savings); Torn (burnout 75 or more, meaning 75 or more); Committed (burnout under 50, meaning 50 or more, intent to leave under 40); Bridge-Builder (burnout 50 to 74, intent to leave under 50); and Ambivalent for everything else. Each pattern’s text describes only what its rule guarantees.

When the pattern and the simulation disagree. Crystallized leans toward a move, Committed toward staying, and Torn and Bridge-Builder toward changing things where you are; the others have no lean. When the simulation favors quitting (60% or more) and the pattern leans toward staying or changing things in place, or favors staying (40% or less) and the pattern leans toward a move, the results say so and name the assumptions behind the simulation’s lead.

Next steps. Each pattern has three next steps. Each card names its source: most are reasoning checks, not tested methods; two cite Wrzesniewski and Dutton’s (2001) theory paper on job crafting, and one cites the “outside view” described by Kahneman (2011).

The regret prompt. Two sliders ask how much you would regret staying and how much you would regret leaving, ten years from now, from 0 (no regret) to 100 (deep regret). When the two differ by less than 8 points the prompt reads them as about the same; otherwise it points toward the choice with less expected regret. It borrows an idea from research on regret: in studies reviewed by Gilovich and Medvec (1995), regrets about things people did were stronger in the short run, while regrets about things they did not do lasted longer. It has not been tested as a way to decide about a job, and the simulation does not use it.

There are none. The questions have not been given to a reference sample, so the scores are not percentiles, there is no average to compare them with, and every band is the tool’s own cut-point. The research cited describes burnout, meaning and turnover in groups of people; it does not provide norms for these questions or check the simulation’s rules.

Intended users: working adults weighing whether to leave a job. The tool is not designed for a layoff, retirement timing or choosing a first job.

It cannot see your situation. Family, health, the people you work with, the specific job you might take, your field’s job market, contracts or non-compete terms, visa ties and your identity never enter the simulation. The results show your own assumptions played forward, which helps you spot which assumption matters most; they do not predict what will happen.

The quit path assumes you leave first. It has no pay during the search. If you would line up a new job before leaving, the quit path costs less than shown; an easy search is the closest setting.

The fixed numbers are judgment calls. The drift toward 50, the yearly random change, the raise variation, the search lengths, the fading rate, the money score’s 40% floor and the equal weights are LifeByLogic’s choices. Different, equally reasonable choices would change the percentages.

Longer horizons are rougher. Random variation has more time to add up over 10 years than over 3, so treat 10-year runs as a thought experiment.

Self-report. The scores rest on your answers today, which move with mood, a bad week and how you read each question. Taking the test again after a few weeks says more than one sitting.

Not a clinical measure or advice. The burnout score is a self-reflection measure, not a diagnosis, and the tool is not career counseling or legal or financial advice. If work stress is affecting your sleep, mood or health, please talk with a doctor or another qualified professional before making a big decision on the strength of this tool.

No independent review of this tool is recorded. The October 2026 repair, with its question-by-question rights check, simulation checks and claim fixes, and the October 17 changes for the paid report were released after review by the author, Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist. See our About page for the site’s reviewers.

• v2.2 (October 17, 2026) — Fixed runs, display fixes and the paid report. The random draws now start from one fixed seed, so the same answers always give the same 10,000 runs and the same shares; before, each run drew new numbers and the shares could differ slightly from one run to the next. A share, score or number of months that would round across one of the tool’s lines now shows one decimal, such as 59.9 beside “neither” instead of 60; a difference between the paths is worked out from the two figures as shown, and money that rounds up to a million now shows in millions instead of as $1000K. A meaning or intent-to-leave score of 0 was read as 50 when the pattern was chosen and shown; it is now read as 0, which can change the pattern for those scores. A figure outside the range its input allows is flagged and not run. The results offer The Quit Ledger, a paid report, except when they show support resources. The questions, the scores’ formulas and the simulation’s rules are unchanged.
• v2.1 (October 14, 2026) — Simulation, rights and truthfulness repair. Both paths’ burnout and meaning now follow the same yearly rules; before, the stay path’s scores drifted toward the middle of the scale with random change that added up year by year, while the quit path’s stayed near today’s scores with smaller random change, so identical expectations did not give an even comparison. Both paths now get raises from year two, the relief and boost you expect start when the new job starts, and the life-quality score uses averages over the horizon instead of the last year alone. A trajectory question the simulation never used was removed. Seven questions were reworded after a rights check. The results now report the share of runs in which quitting came out ahead rather than a chance that quitting is better, the patterns and next steps say only what their rules and sources support, and the results say when the pattern and the simulation disagree. Saved life-quality scores and shares of runs from before this date used the earlier simulation, so they are not comparable with later ones; the burnout, meaning and intent scores use the same formulas, though seven questions are worded differently. This page was rewritten to describe the tool as it is.
• v2.0 (June 2026) — New burnout and meaning questions written by LifeByLogic, and the simulation of staying and leaving. The methodology page published at that time described a four-pathway algorithm based on Lee and Mitchell’s (1994) unfolding model of turnover, with job-embeddedness and fit scales and 0–10 factor scores; the tool did not use them, and that page was replaced in v2.1.
• v1.0 (May 2, 2026) — Initial public release.

• Boswell, W. R., Boudreau, J. W., & Tichy, J. (2005). The relationship between employee job change and job satisfaction: The honeymoon-hangover effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 882–892.
• Creedy, D. K., Sidebotham, M., Gamble, J., Pallant, J., & Fenwick, J. (2017). Prevalence of burnout, depression, anxiety and stress in Australian midwives: A cross-sectional survey. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17, 13.
• 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.
• Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2), 379–395.
• Griffeth, R. W., Hom, P. W., & Gaertner, S. (2000). A meta-analysis of antecedents and correlates of employee turnover: Update, moderator tests, and research implications for the next millennium. Journal of Management, 26(3), 463–488.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Kristensen, T. S., Borritz, M., Villadsen, E., & Christensen, K. B. (2005). The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory: A new tool for the assessment of burnout. Work & Stress, 19(3), 192–207.
• Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (1994). An alternative approach: The unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover. Academy of Management Review, 19(1), 51–89.
• Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422.
• Mobley, W. H. (1977). Intermediate linkages in the relationship between job satisfaction and employee turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62(2), 237–240.
• Rosso, B. D., Dekas, K. H., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2010). On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review. Research in Organizational Behavior, 30, 91–127.
• 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.
• World Health Organization. (2019, May 28). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. who.int.
• Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.

Terms related to this tool, defined in the LifeByLogic glossary:

Browse the full glossary →

• Take the Should I Quit? test — the tool itself.
• Crossroads Lab hub — sister decision tools.
• About the author — Abiot Y. Derbie, PhD.
• LifeByLogic editorial policy — how all our methodology is sourced, reviewed, and disclosed.