Mental Load: When Thinking Itself Becomes Work

What Is Mental Load, Really?

Mental load describes the invisible thinking work required just to keep family, work, and everyday life running: planning, coordinating, keeping track, not forgetting anything. Has the presentation been finished yet? Does the child still need something for school? Who’s taking care of the gift for the mother-in-law? What’s for dinner tonight — and when exactly is there time to shop for it? For many people, these questions run quietly in the background, often all day long, whether or not any actual shopping or cooking is happening right now.

That, according to Sabatella, is exactly what makes mental load so hard to pin down: it’s rarely about whether a task ultimately gets done, but about who holds it in mind, monitors it, and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. This kind of responsibility doesn’t simply switch off when the workday ends.

Five Forms of Invisible Work

Research — developed further by Sabatella and her colleague Isabel Willemse at ZHAW’s Institute for Applied Psychology, among others — divides mental load into several areas:

• Concrete tasks: everything that actually needs doing day to day — in the family, at work, in private life.
• The view of oneself: good intentions, the guilty conscience around exercise, nutrition, or screen time — everything we “really” mean to do for ourselves.
• Meta-parenting: the fundamental questions of raising children — what values do I want to pass on, how do I handle media use or parenting styles.
• Emotional load: emotional responsibility for others — how is my neighbour doing, have I checked in with my mother, how is my team’s wellbeing.
• Management: the overarching coordination — keeping an eye on finances, on your own health and that of family members.

This list alone shows how much gets bundled under this one term — and why it can’t be reduced to a single sentence.

Mental Load Is Not Simply Stress

Mental load and stress are related, but according to Sabatella they are not the same thing. Stress has its own, well-researched trajectory — for instance in the model of resilience, which I explore in more depth in another article. With mental load, by contrast, the taking on of responsibility is central: the feeling of being in charge of something, of not being able to “cross it off mentally” even while not actively doing it right now. It’s precisely this constant monitoring — not the individual task itself — that wears people down over time.

Where the Term Comes From

The phenomenon itself isn’t new. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild described the unpaid extra work many women perform at home after their actual workday as early as 1989, in her book The Second Shift — though the term then largely faded from view again. It wasn’t until 2017 that French cartoonist Emma brought the topic back into public awareness with her comic “You Should’ve Asked” (originally “Fallait demander”), making the concept accessible to a wider audience. Since then it’s been talked about much more — partly because social media has made the issue more visible.

When Load Becomes Overload

When mental load grows too large, it’s referred to as mental overload. According to Sabatella, the direct consequences are so far only partly researched — systematic study of the phenomenon has only been underway since around 2020 — but they compare well to the effects of chronic stress:

• Psychological: sleep problems, because everything still left to do resurfaces in the mind at bedtime; also anxiety, depressive symptoms, and — especially among parents — a growing risk of parental burnout.
• Physical: weight changes as well as somatic complaints such as headaches or stomach aches.
• Social: more conflict in relationships, because invisible work often simply goes unseen; career setbacks are also more common, as people scale back professionally. A recent study also describes an “activity gap”: on average, women move less because they simply don’t have the time for it — a cycle that reinforces itself.

The First Step: Making It Visible

The real problem with mental load is often that it grows gradually and, for a long time, isn’t recognised as such at all. So the first step is simply to make it visible. Sabatella recommends, for example, the mental load self-test from Equal Care Day, which lists typical, often-overlooked tasks to check off: Do I think of this? Do I also do it? Anyone who isn’t a fan of questionnaires can instead look back over the last two or three days and write it all down, or map it out on a flipchart — including everything that actually belongs to a task (for dinner, for example, not just the cooking itself, but also the shopping list, when there’s time to shop, and the question of what’s even still in the fridge).

The Second Step: Knowing What I Really Want

Once mental load has been made visible, the harder question follows: what do I actually want? It doesn’t have to mean an exact 50/50 split — the expectation of a perfectly fair division often leads to more frustration than relief in couples, according to Sabatella. For some, it’s enough that their invisible work is simply seen and acknowledged. Others genuinely want a different distribution — 60/40, 70/30, whatever fits their own situation.

What matters after that is communication: saying clearly how you feel, rather than expecting the other person to just notice. And just as clearly, saying what a task should concretely look like once you hand it off — otherwise you stay stuck in the monitoring role even after delegating the execution to someone else. It also helps to start not with the most painful area, but with something that still feels okay even if it doesn’t go exactly the way you pictured it.

Men Are Affected Too

Statistically, it’s still mostly women who recognise themselves in descriptions of mental load. But men are affected as well — often in situations where their partner has a very time-intensive job or a leadership role, or in leadership positions in their own careers. Why men report it less often overall can’t be fully explained. One likely factor is differing socialisation: from early childhood, girls are more often taught to look after others and to keep track of tasks than boys are.

A Matter of Life Stage

Mental load doesn’t only affect people with children, but it changes especially visibly alongside them. It tends to show up most strongly during what’s sometimes called the “rush hour of life,” roughly between ages 35 and 50, when career, young children, or finding one’s own place in life all demand attention at once. Later in life, the focus increasingly shifts to one’s own health and that of family members — mental load remains a lifelong theme, it just keeps changing shape.

Digitalisation as an Amplifier

In the past, availability often ended when school or the workday was over. Today those boundaries are increasingly blurred — and according to Sabatella, social media in particular adds extra mental strain for teenagers. This brings plenty of advantages, but it also makes it harder to truly switch off.

Not Just a Private Matter

Many women first look for the cause of their mental load within themselves — as a personal sense of inadequacy, rather than what it actually is: an issue with a societal, structural dimension too. In countries such as Germany, this societal dimension is already given more consideration, for instance through equal pay and more supportive structures for women. Still, shifting the expectations society places on women and men takes time — even if younger generations already understand their roles noticeably differently than earlier ones did.

My Take From Coaching Practice

In my own work, I very often see how much mental load operates beneath the surface without ever being named. People come to me feeling “just exhausted,” without being able to say exactly why — and then find, in precisely this invisible thinking work, a first, very concrete explanation. Simply having a word for it already brings noticeable relief. The next step — honestly looking at your own workload and then actually changing something — is far harder, but doable. Sabatella’s appeal on this fits well with my own stance in coaching: it doesn’t have to be the perfect solution. But starting somewhere is worth it.

Reflection Questions to Take Further

• Which of the five forms of mental load — concrete tasks, self-focus, meta-parenting, emotional load, management — is occupying me most right now?
• How would I notice that my mental load is becoming too much?
• What would already help, even if I couldn’t change the underlying situation: being seen, acknowledgement — or a different distribution of tasks?
• Where could I consciously hand off a small, manageable task this week — and exactly how should it then get done?

Frequently Asked Questions About Mental Load

What’s the difference between mental load and a normal to-do list?

A to-do list can be checked off. Mental load, by contrast, refers to the ongoing, often unconscious thinking work happening in the background — keeping track, planning, and monitoring so that nothing gets forgotten. This thinking work continues even when the concrete task isn’t due right now.

Does mental load only affect people with children?

No. Mental load shows up especially clearly in family life, but it applies just as much to work contexts — coordinating a team, for example — and to people without children, such as in caring for their own health or for relatives.

Does it help to split tasks strictly 50/50?

Not necessarily. The expectation of an exactly fair split often leads to more frustration than relief in couples. It’s more helpful to honestly clarify what actually fits your own situation — that might mean a different split, or simply more acknowledgement for invisible work already being done.

How can I make my own mental load visible?

A simple starting point is a structured self-test like the one from Equal Care Day, which lists typical, often-overlooked tasks. Alternatively, it helps to look back over the past few days and write them down or map them out — including all the sub-steps that actually belong to a task.

Conclusion: Mental Load as Invisible Work

Mental load rarely announces itself directly — it shows up as exhaustion without an obvious cause, as a nagging sense of never quite being caught up. Naming it is often the first real step toward doing something about it: not by aiming for a perfect division of labour, but by making the invisible thinking work visible, talking about it openly, and finding a distribution that actually fits your own life.