The Burnout Budget: Experiencing Resource Loss and Recovery in Real Time

This experiential exercise immerses students in allocating limited resources across work, health, finances, and relationships while encountering fixed costs and unpredictable events. The Burnout Budget illustrates how unfair starting points, depletion, and constrained choices can fuel stress and burnout. The activity draws on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and experiential learning, and fits within a 40 to 60 minute session, adapting easily to undergraduate, graduate, and executive contexts. Students connect firsthand experience to theory by examining tradeoffs, inequality, and recovery. The instructions, materials, and debrief guidance help instructors foster engagement and reflection on resilience and values in management education.