Free work & school tools
20 short exercises on work & school, 1 to 8 minutes each, free and with no account needed. Open one and it runs right in the page.
The 20 tools
Where stress lands in your workday
Mark the times in your working week when pressure peaks. Once you can see the pattern, you can decide what goes next to it.
What you need from work
Choose and rank the things you most need from work or study to feel okay. When something at work feels wrong, this list usually shows what is missing.
Demands against control
Place the parts of your work or study on a grid of how demanding they are against how much say you have over them. High demand with low control is where strain tends to live.
Build an end-of-day shutdown
Design a short routine that tells your brain the working day is over, so it stops running the day back at dinner and at 2 a.m.
How feedback lands on you
Rate how often a set of common reactions to feedback at work or school has been true for you lately: the praise you wave away, the criticism you replay, the review you dread.
One meeting, six dials
Pick one recurring meeting or class and set six dials for how it actually goes for you. It is usually not the meeting that is the problem; it is one or two settings on it.
How you meet a deadline
Sort your deadline habits by whether they help you, cost you, or both at once. Most people run on a mix and have never looked at which is which.
The person who grades you
Write your way through your relationship with a manager, supervisor, or teacher: what they seem to want, what you assume about them, and what actually happens when it goes well.
Sunday evening signals
Tick the ways the week ahead announces itself on the evening before it starts. The Sunday feeling has parts, and the parts point at different things.
Signs remote work has drifted
For anyone who works or studies from home. Tick the small drifts that happen when there is no building to leave, no commute to end the day, and no one to see you not taking a break.
Three breaths before the call
A very short paced breath for the minute before you join a meeting, walk into a classroom, or hit send on a message you have rewritten five times.
Speaking up in the room
A guided run-through for the moment before you say something in a meeting or a class: notice the sentence, shrink it, wait for the gap, and say it before the gap closes.
Seven workdays, logged
Each day, rate how much of the day felt like real work, how you felt at the end of it, and how connected you were to the people around you. After a week the three lines tell a story about your job or your course.
What a coworker might mean
Turn over cards that show something a coworker or classmate did on one side and the other readings of it on the back. The first story we tell ourselves is rarely the only one.
Where the working week goes
Divide 100 points across the things that fill a typical working or study week, honestly. Most people find the "actual work" bar smaller than they expected and the "waiting and worrying" bar larger.
The asking ladder at work
Rank the things people ask for at work or school from easiest to hardest for you. Everyone has a ladder; the surprising part is usually which rung is at the top.
Prepare a hard conversation at work
Assemble a plan for a conversation you have been putting off with a manager, a coworker, a teacher, or a teammate: what you want them to know, what you are asking for, and how you will open.
The role you play on a team
Choose the parts you tend to play in a team, a class, or a group project, then put them in order. Some are chosen; some were handed to you a long time ago and never given back.
The student load
For anyone studying, full-time or alongside a job. Set a dial for how much weight each part of student life is carrying right now. The heaviest dial is rarely the coursework.
After a mistake at work
Write through one mistake you made at work or school: what actually happened, what you have told yourself since, and what someone fair would say about it.
What these tools are, and are not
Every tool here is free and works without an account: choose cards, move dials, sort a list, follow a paced breath, or keep a seven-day log, and read back what you noticed at the end. They are built to make a vague feeling more specific, which is often the first useful step.
None of them diagnoses, screens for or treats anything, and nothing you see at the end is a score or a label. If something you notice worries you, a licensed therapist is the right next conversation, and the directory is free to browse.