What Is Spoon Theory? A Guide to Running Out of Spoons

• 2003 the year it started
• 12 spoons on the diner table
• 1 spoon just to get out of bed
• 5 most spoons on any of our articles

If you’ve ever seen someone say “I’m out of spoons” and wondered why cutlery was involved, this one’s for you. If you’re already a spoonie, it’s for the people you keep having to explain yourself to. Send them the link and go lie down.

Where the spoons came from

In 2003, Christine Miserandino was sitting in a diner with her best friend, who had watched her take her lupus medication and asked what living with lupus actually felt like. Miserandino grabbed a handful of spoons from the surrounding tables, twelve of them, handed them over and said, more or less, here’s your energy for the day. Then she asked her friend to walk her through a normal day, and took a spoon away for every task.

Getting out of bed cost one. Showering cost one. Getting dressed, travelling, working through the afternoon, each of them took another spoon, and by the time her friend was “home” from her imaginary workday she had one left. She could cook dinner or she could shower. Not both. Miserandino later wrote the whole conversation up as an essay called The Spoon Theory on her site But You Don’t Look Sick, and it spread through chronic illness communities and then well beyond them.

Nothing about the task changed; the spoon count did.

How it works

Everyone starts the day with a set number of spoons, and every activity spends some. For a lot of disabled and chronically ill people, the number you wake up with is smaller, it changes from day to day without asking your permission, and things other people never think about, like washing your hair, cost real spoons.

The part people tend to miss is borrowing. You can take spoons from tomorrow to get through today, but you pay that back with interest, and tomorrow might be the day you needed every one of them. Miserandino has said she keeps a spare spoon in her pocket for exactly that reason.

Why neurodivergent folks use it too

Spoon theory started with lupus, but neurodivergent people of every kind have picked it up, because the maths works the same way. Masking costs spoons. A noisy supermarket with flickering lights costs spoons. Switching between tasks, making phone calls and sitting in a meeting that could have been an email all cost spoons, and none of that shows up on the outside. People often describe autistic burnout as the result of overdrawing that account for months at a time.

It’s also a handy way to talk about why the same thing can be fine on Tuesday and impossible on Thursday. Nothing about the task changed; the spoon count did.

The beauty of spoons is that they give you a shared unit.

Using it with the people around you

The beauty of spoons is that they give you a shared unit. “I’ve only got a couple of spoons today” says a lot more than “I’m tired”, and it doesn’t invite the “have you tried sleeping more” conversation. A few ways people use it:

• Telling friends how many spoons you’ve got before plans, so everyone can pick something that fits.
• Planning big days, like gigs and festivals, around where the spoons are going to go. Our festival survival guide is basically a spoon budget with a packing list attached.
• Asking “how are your spoons?” when you know someone with a disability or chronic illness, which gives them an easy way to answer honestly.

And if someone tells you they’re out of spoons, believe them. It isn’t laziness and it isn’t a lack of willpower. They’ve spent what they had.

The spoons in our bylines

You might have noticed a little row of spoons beside the date on our articles. That’s our rough guess at how much a piece will cost you to read, so you can check it against today’s budget before you start.

The count comes from reading time. Anything up to about four minutes is one spoon, and every extra four minutes or so adds another, up to four. A piece with a content warning gets one more on top, because heavy subject matter drains the tank faster than its word count suggests, so five is the most any article can get.

Treat the number as a starting point. A two-spoon piece about something close to home can cost you far more, and a long, silly one might hand a couple back. Tap the spoons on any article if you want a quick reminder of what they mean.

Stay unruly.