Remember to pick up paper towels on your way home from work! Oh, summer camp sign ups are at 6. Ooh, should you include your boss in that upcoming meeting this week?
How do you lighten your mental load — those seemingly never-ending tasks you're constantly keeping track of in your brain?
It's a question that sociologist Leah Ruppanner explores in her new book, Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More, which comes out today. It offers evidence-based tools to reduce what she calls "emotional thinking work," so we can use that energy in a more meaningful way.
Ruppanner, a professor at The University of Melbourne in Australia who has spent decades studying gender, work and family, has found that just being able to acknowledge and measure the mental load can slim it down. "Once we see it, we can't unsee it. We can start to address it," she says.
While everyone has a mental load to some extent — women carry the greatest burden, she says. In one study of survey data with over 3,000 parents in the United States, she and other researchers found that women were responsible for over 70% of the domestic mental load, including keeping track of everyone's schedules or remembering to delegate tasks.
In a conversation with Life Kit, Ruppanner unpacks some of the assumptions that keep a woman's mental load heavy, and what it takes to reclaim your headspace. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let's start with mental load and gender. What are some of the pervasive cultural myths that you wish would go away?
One of the biggest lies we sell each other is that women are better multitaskers than men, that their brains are just more efficient at keeping track of all these competing things.
The research doesn't show that. What it shows is that none of us can multitask. What multitaskers are good at doing is task switching, which burns through some of your cognitive capacity and drains some of your energy.
Another myth we tell each other is that women are really good household managers and men are terrible at this. But [research has shown] that men who engage in the primary care of children and take care of the household, they're healthier, they're happier, they're more balanced.
Some of these social norms just position [women] to take on the work. Then we set each other up to reinforce these gender roles.
You ran a study testing the stereotype that "men can't see the mess."
With colleagues at University of California, Santa Barbara, and New York University, we showed [male and female participants] a messy room and a clean room. And we asked them: Can you rate the messiness of this room?
We found that men and women rate it as equally clean and equally messy. So this idea that "men can't see the mess or dirt" is nonsense. Let's stop saying that to each other and believing it. Men can see the socks on the floor.
You say that one of the most effective ways to lighten the mental load is to figure out what's exactly on the list. How do you do that?
I have this new website where if you want to actually measure your mental load, you can take a free assessment and see what you're carrying.
Your book also offers a tool called the Mental Load Audit. The idea is to sort the tasks in your head into eight categories so you can see where your energy is going. Can you tell us about some of those buckets?
The first one is life organization. This is staying on top of the planning and the tasks. The second one is emotional support. This is checking in on family, friends and coworkers to make sure they're doing OK. Another is individual upkeep, like, did I make that doctor's appointment? Do I need to get my hair cut?
You can find all eight categories in your book, and also online. Once you've categorized your mental load, what do you do next?
Start thinking about whether these things are drains [to your energy] or credits.
Every day you wake up with a certain amount of capacity, and every day you spend it. You cannot, every day, pull your mental load into deficit. You need to have some energy.
Now, for some that will be about reducing some of the mental load. But for others, that will be about figuring out the things that bring you joy, that are replenishing. Then start thinking about how you align your mental spending that way.
How do we prioritize the tasks that matter most?
Get clear on who's on your starting lineup. One of the mothers [I interviewed] said, "I'm weighing the requests from my book club, the Parent-Teacher Association and my parents. I can't say no to any of them."
But if you have a moment to go, "Who's really critical right now?" It becomes easier to say no. Then you can filter what decisions are worth the investment.
You share another way to lighten your mental load: outsource some of your responsibilities. This tends to cost money — for example, hiring a house cleaner or child care. Are there other ways to offload our tasks without breaking the bank?
Can technology do it? Maybe artificial intelligence can do the meal planning. Or there are apps that can read your emails and put [events] into a shared calendar.
One of the other things I talk about in the book is getting a "good is good enough" mentality, and starting to think about when our standards are too high.
Like, if you are worried about the way the forks go in the dishwasher, part of your mental load is being spent monitoring that. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not.
So what is the ultimate goal here, once you've succeeded in lightening the load?
To say: I have enough mental load energy to figure out where I'm going, and I can create new, interesting worlds, or lives that I love to live, where I'm thriving, where I'm happy, where I'm passionate, where I'm excited, and not waking up depleted or burnt.
Take the Mental Load Measurement, a short quiz developed by Ruppanner, to measure where your mental load is heaviest — and get suggestions on how to lighten it.
The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.
Copyright 2026 NPR
