The Mental Load Is More Than a To-Do List. Leah Ruppanner Breaks Down the Eight Types Women Carry

The sociologist behind Drained unpacks the eight categories of mental load women carry, and the gender myths that keep them heavy.

Women have more education, more income and, in many cases, partners who are doing more than previous generations. So why are so many still completely exhausted?

That was the question hanging over a packed lunchtime room at King's College London yesterday, where Professor Leah Ruppanner had come to launch her new book Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More. Speaking with Professor Heejung Chung at the King's Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Ruppanner — a sociologist based at Vanderbilt University and affiliated with the University of Melbourne, where she founded the Future of Work Lab — offered a definition that reframed what most of us thought we already understood.

The popular understanding of the mental load often reduces it to household chores and logistics: remembering the milk, booking the dentist, tracking school forms or wondering whether dinner actually made it out of the freezer.

Ruppanner's argument is that it goes much deeper. For women, the mental load is a complex form of "emotional thinking work" — cognitive work and emotional work fused together — that is invisible, boundaryless and enduring.

Invisible, because much of it happens inside our heads. Boundaryless, because it follows us everywhere: into work, onto walks, into sleep, and annoyingly, into the bath. Enduring, because as Ruppanner put it, it is "tied to the people we love most, including ourselves." When, she asked the room, do you ever stop?

That definition was, oddly, a comfort. As my friend Laura Davidson, founder of travel PR firm LDPR, put it after the event: "What stood out for me is how this 'mental load' is a common thread with all women, and how much we all carry around in our heads. I thought it was just me overthinking everything and having too many to-do lists in my brain."

The mental load is not one thing. It is eight.

Ruppanner's framework breaks the mental load into eight types, naming what many women feel but struggle to explain.

The eight types are:

• Life organization — staying on top of planning, logistics and tasks

• Emotional support — checking in on family, friends and coworkers

• Relationship hygiene — maintaining strong social connections

• Magic making — carrying on traditions and creating special moments

• Dream building — helping others fulfill their passions and ambitions

• Individual upkeep — keeping yourself fit and healthy

• Safety — protecting family and loved ones from danger

• Meta-care — raising children, and others we care for, so they can thrive in the future

  
  

Her list moves the conversation beyond the lazy explanation that "women are tired because they multi-task." It's a myth Ruppanner is keen to bury, since the research shows none of us actually can. What multitaskers are good at is task switching, which burns through cognitive capacity and drains energy.

When Ruppanner asked the room "what's heavy in your mental load right now?", quite a few hands shot up. Whether dinner had been taken out of the freezer. Whether a son would find a job in the age of AI. How to manage a teenage daughter's demands. Whether to email the council about an issue next door. Ruppanner mapped each one back to a different form of mental load: life organization, dream building, safety, future planning.

Anyone (everyone?) who worries about a litany of things was nodding in recognition. As Ruppanner put it: "How can you ask for what you need if you don't have language for it?"

Women are not imagining the penalty for dropping the ball

Part of what Drained sets out to do is dismantle the cultural myths that keep women's mental loads heavy. Chief among them: the idea that women are naturally better multitaskers, naturally better household managers, and that men simply can't see the mess.

One reason the mental load is so stubborn is that women are often judged more harshly when things fall apart, or even when things simply look imperfect.

Ruppanner shared her research designed to test whether men are, as the old excuse goes, "dirt blind." The study showed people a clean room and a messy room. In fact, men and women could both see the mess. Science has spoken: mess is not invisible to men after all.

The more revealing finding came when the room was assigned to either a man or a woman. When people believed the room belonged to a woman, they judged her more negatively if it was messy. She was seen as less capable, less hardworking and, in Ruppanner's words, even "less human."

Perhaps that explains why so many women feel they cannot simply opt out of standards around home, appearance, caregiving, social planning or emotional availability. The judgement is real.

Mental load does not just drain time. It drains ambition.

The mental load does not only drain time and energy. It crowds out women's ability to imagine, plan and invest in their own futures.

As part of her research, she asked women to think about their dreams the way a financial adviser might ask someone to think about investment goals. Where do you want to be in one year, three years, five years?

Many could not answer. They were too focused on getting through tomorrow. The children needed picking up. The aging parent needed care. The emails needed answering. The logistics kept coming. Somewhere in that swirl, women had fallen to the bottom of their own list.

Ruppanner also described a study where she gave women money to reduce their mental load. Many struggled to spend it on themselves. They could justify spending money on children, partners or the household. But spending it on their own rest, support, joy or development felt indulgent.

Men, she noted, were more likely to frame their dreams as an investment in the family. Women often saw their dreams as coming at the family's expense.

Care is not a side issue

When asked what would help address the mental load, Ruppanner said care has to be valued as economic labor. Not just childcare. Aged care, family care, medical care, emotional care. All care.

She pointed to the scale of the shift already underway: nearly half a million women in the United States left the labor force in 2025, with caregiving responsibilities the leading factor. "It's not the future," she said. "It's now."

One of her practical workplace ideas was flexible cash: giving employees a pot of money they can spend on whatever lightens their actual load that month. Eldercare. A cleaner. A meal service during a busy work period. "Some organisations pay for your Nikes," she said. "Why can't they pay to lighten your mental load?"

A workplace that ignores care is not neutral. It is simply outsourcing the cost, usually to women.

Rest is not a reward for coping

Ruppanner described mental energy as finite and precious. That made me pause. How many times have I just kept adding on (and on)?

We talk about time management constantly. We talk far less about energy management, particularly the emotional and cognitive energy women spend monitoring, anticipating, remembering, checking, planning and worrying.

L to R: Laura Davidson, Emily Goldfischer, and Dr. Leah Ruppanner

She encouraged people to start measuring mental load the way they might track sleep, blood pressure or steps. Notice when it is heavier. Notice what drains it. Notice the patterns. Notice the moments when rest is not a luxury, but the only sensible response. Rest, she argued, has to be real rest. "You deserve it," she said. "And it can't be riddled with guilt."

In the Q&A, a woman a few rows ahead of me raised her hand and said the real opportunity of this book is to take the mental load conversation beyond women and into society. Ruppanner agreed. "Everyone has a mental load," she said. "What is the composition?" What her research finds is that it tends to fall into categories: people pleasers, high achievers, caretakers. Most of us will recognise ourselves in at least one.

Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More by Leah Ruppanner is out now. The free Mental Load Audit is available at lightenlab.com.