A study conducted by the Russian company Stakhanovets, which specializes in institutional analytics, revealed that signs of severe job burnout can be detected through the emails sent by the employee.
According to an analysis of data collected during 2026, the length of emails in professional correspondence is directly related to the level of psychological exhaustion of the employee, as the writing style takes an extreme form: either excessively hostile brevity, or excessively chaotic length.
Analysts noted that these shifts in email patterns become noticeable two to three months before the employee himself becomes aware of his condition, making correspondence an effective early warning tool for detecting this condition.
Under normal circumstances, an email includes a greeting, context, a specific request, and a polite closing, averaging between 60 and 120 words (equivalent to 3 to 5 sentences). However, in the chronic burnout stage, the length of the message decreases by 40%, ranging between 10 and 20 words, and the greeting disappears in 78% of cases. Dry phrases such as "Do," "Doesn't work," and "I'm waiting" appear. Meanwhile, 25% of employees exhibit the opposite behavior, with their messages exceeding 200-300 words, but they lose their logical coherence and are repetitive and full of unnecessary details, draining the employee's energy 3 to 4 times more than usual to express a simple idea.
One month before the peak of burnout for an employee, the proportion of negative phrases in their correspondence increases by 55%, and words such as "problem," "again," "failure," and "useless" double by 2.3 times, while words of gratitude such as "thank you" and "excellent" decrease to a third.
Under normal circumstances, the time it takes to respond to email ranges from two to four hours. However, in cases of mental exhaustion, this can double to eight to twelve hours, and in 15% of cases, it may exceed 24 hours. Researchers attribute this not to laziness, but to a decrease in the production of dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, which causes employees to see their emails but be unable to motivate themselves to reply.
