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Dad Field Manual · Field card 47 · Marriage & TeamworkIdea · not yet tested

Split the invisible jobs: a who-does-what list

The forms, the refills, the gift for Saturday's party: someone has to notice them before anyone can do them. In thirty minutes you'll have every unseen job on one page, each with one owner who handles it start to finish, and a date to check how it's going.

Time
30 min
Cost
$0
Ages
Any age
Where
Kitchen table

What you need

  • A sheet of paper or a shared note on your phones
  • Two pens, one for each of you
  • Your calendars: phone or the paper one on the fridge
  • A pad of sticky notes, if you'd rather sort jobs by hand

Before you start

  • Nobody's on trial. This list is about the jobs, not about who has been dropping them. No tallies of the past.
  • Keep the kids out of the middle. Do it after bedtime, and never ask a kid to remind the other parent of their job.
  • Hand over health jobs completely. If doctor appointments change owners, pass along the doctor's number, the next checkup due and any prescriptions to refill.

Steps

  1. Ask for it kindly. On a calm night, ask for thirty minutes to list the jobs that have to get noticed.
  2. List the jobs nobody sees. Walk through a week and then a year, and write down every job that someone has to notice.
  3. Write each job start to finish. For each job, write every piece from noticing it to finishing it, including the remembering.
  4. Give each job one owner. Take turns picking whole jobs, balance by time and worry, and write the owner's initial beside each.
  5. Name a backup for the big ones. For bills, medicines and deadlines, the other person learns enough to cover for a week.
  6. Hand it over cleanly. Post the list, let each owner do the job their own way, and skip reminders and redoing.
  7. Review in a month. Meet again in four weeks, ask what's working and what's falling through, and trade jobs if needed.

If it stalls

  • If the list gets long and overwhelming, circle the five jobs that cause the most stress and assign those first. The rest can wait for the review.
  • If one of you has been doing most of it, start by having that person hand over two whole jobs, with everything they know about them.
Jobs with one owner
Signed off: can do this.Signed by Date