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So a few weeks ago I listened to the audiobook of Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky. There are a TON of interesting ideas in it, but something that I think we need to discuss first is something she calls CPE – Conception, Planning, and Execution. When your partner “takes” a task, do they do the entirety of the task themselves — or do you find yourself doing part of the task for them? How do you feel about your partner doing the entirety of a task?
{related: how to get help when you’re “the default parent”}
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Her whole book is based on the idea that partners should split tasks among themselves (she has a card deck you can buy that lists the 100 different tasks), and that whichever partner takes the task be completely responsible for conception, planning, and execution.
Here’s how she describes it in the book (pages 114-115), noting that professional organizations regularly use this kind of organizational system to accomplish things:
Let’s say you hold the ‘groceries’ card. Your kid is a big fan of mustard on his hot dog. You notice there is no mustard in the refrigerator or the pantry. That’s Conception. You add mustard to the grocery list that you create every week. You schedule when you’ll go to the store and consult your partner and anyone else helping around the house for any add-ons to the list. That’s Planning. You go to the grcoery store so that the mustard is restored to the fridge before your son takes a bite (of what you like to think is the best hot dog in the world, because it’s made with love — and mustard.) That’s Execution.
Within the Fair Play system, playing for CPE requires that whoever holds a task card Conceives, Plans, and Executes the heck out of it — without reminders, half-ass efforts and excuses, or soliciting a ‘good job’ for completion. If you’re thinking: Yeah, right. That’s unrealistic and not the way we do things around here, or would ever do things, let me stop you. … I [have] observed over and over again that the couples who adhere to the Fair Play CPE approach experience the most dramatic shifts away from dysfunction, resentment, and passive-aggressive behaviors in their relationship and toward more time-saving efficiency and feelings of fairness in the home.
In other words, when both people completely own their sh*t, it’s not only far more efficient, but there is far less nagging (huge benefit to husbands) and a significant lift in the mental load (huge benefit to wives).
So whenever I read something like this, I honestly go back to the time I wrote about being totally overwhelmed as the default parent, and asking my husband to help pick up the slack. Sure thing, babe — just tell me what you need me to do.
Even when I wrote that post, I didn’t truly get it — that’s the entire crux of the problem! In so many people’s systems the other partner doesn’t know what needs to be done, or how to conceive/plan it, which leaves you “assigning” them tasks to execute. Occasionally. If you tell them exactly what to do. And… maybe remind them a few times to do it. (But I’m sure that’s just me, right guys?) And meanwhile, all the other things that need to be conceived, planned and mostly executed are just flying around in your head.
{related: how to share parenting duties with your spouse}
So we’ll have a new series discussing how to share the load with your partners — but first let’s discuss the general organizational system you use. Does the CPE system from Fair Play make sense to you — or do you prefer another sort of system? (Do you have a Kanban board like we wrote about in our post on sharing emotional labor with your partner?)
Stock photo via Stencil.
{related: what to know about weaponized incompetence}
Anon says
The example seems like a pretty long, drawn out way of describing a fairly simple thing. Whoever notices we need mustard adds it to the shared google doc for groceries that is used to create the curbside pickup order.
Marshmallow says
I think the example is different. In this system, whoever is responsible for groceries is also responsible for noticing what’s missing. The other person wouldn’t even have to be on the lookout for missing mustard. In practice, I’ve found when we default to “whoever notices does the thing” the majority of the time it’s me (the wife).
I hadn’t heard this CPE term before, but I like it, and it more accurately describes how we’ve been trying to allocate tasks the past year or so. I am in charge of selecting a preschool for our child. I researched the schools, decided which to apply to, attended the open houses (and invited Husband, he came to some of them), and while I’m consulting with Husband on the final decision because it’s a big deal, ultimately the whole thing beginning to end is my task to deal with. On the other hand, Husband handles all laundry. He decides how he wants the hampers sorted, when to do which type of laundry, he folds it, he puts it away in all of our drawers (yes even mine), and coordinates dry cleaning.
I have better organizational skills and a more demanding job, so it works better for us for me to handle Big Planning Stuff like school selection and for him to handle the day to day, like laundry and groceries. We only started doing it this way when I lost my dang mind about a year into the pandemic when I just could not be interrupted one.more.time. to tell Husband what temperature to wash the gym clothes or exactly what was on the menu this week. It’s been a big help.
Anon says
Yeah, I guess that’s what I was trying to say – that assigning one person to do each of these “stages” for each task feels like it’s making the task unnecessary complicated. I can see how it works for something like laundry (we each do our own, so I don’t have experience sharing that) but for groceries it seems like it’s a lot more efficient to just have whoever notices the lack of mustard add it to the list. It hasn’t been my experience that I’m the only one who notices stuff like that, but my husband does the grocery pickups and does most of the cooking in our house so he’s always been pretty involved in anything food-related.
Our basic division is physical vs emotional labor with him doing a lot more of the daily household chores and me doing a lot more of the emotional labor that requires research or planning, like booking doctors appointments and research schools and activities. We split daycare pickups and dropoffs pretty equally.
Anonymous says
I think where the author of Fair Play comes out on this is that one person completely owns each task. You can set up a Google Keep list for the groceries that both add to, for sure, but it’s so much more efficient if one person bottomlines the task each week (through purchasing groceries and putting them away).
Anonymous says
My husband is completely missing the “Conception” part. Now what? How do you teach someone to OPEN THEIR EYES and notice things?
An.On. says
It is ASTOUNDING to me how little my husband “sees” around the house – used paper towels on the countertop, dead bugs on the floor, and oh my god, when the toilet paper roll (or anything else!) RUNS OUT, you REPLACE IT ASAP. If he notices stuff, yeah, it’s added to his list, but the vast majority simply never registers. And it’s not like he’s just ignoring stuff he doesn’t care about. He is the only person who drinks coffee in the house and he drinks it every single day and the number of emergency grocery trips he has to make because he didn’t notice he was running low, and is now out of coffee is just… mind-boggling to me.
Anon says
But he does do this. I guarantee, he notices that the lawn needs to be mowed or the gas is low in his car or he needs to set the DVR for the football game. (I know those are stereotypical examples and I’m sorry.) But all humans are capable of noticing things and planning ahead. The difference is that he doesn’t feel like he needs to pay attention to these specific cases. That’s okay, we all choose what we notice, but if it’s impacting your partner to the point of resentment and frustration, you need to decide whether you want to pay attention, not be taught a basic human skill.
Men are not “incapable” of seeing a full laundry basket or researching summer camps or wrapping gifts. They just don’t, likely because it just got taken care of by their moms growing up and/or their partners do it now. That’s not an excuse that lets them off the hook forever. In my house, saying you don’t know how to do laundry means you end up doing ALL laundry until you can do it correctly. Saying you don’t know how to wrap a gift “as well as her” means you’re in charge of all gifts until they’re even better. Stop letting that be an excuse.
Anonymous says
just throwing this out there: my husband has ADHD. Once I realized what that actually means in terms of how he processes information and his ability to make and execute on plans, the battles over division of labor got a lot better. I am a planner. I manage the family calendar and make a lot of lists of what needs to be done by when. If my husband has a task or a problem that needs a solution and a near-term deadline, he’s great at getting it done.
ADHD anon says
Seconding that CPE can be a real bitch if one partner is neurodiverse. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD inattentive type and it makes so much more sense why picking up is hard for me. I just stop seeing things and my brain is usually elsewhere. Ditto on remembering to feed the cats and stuff like that.
But man, I’m a pro at keeping our finances organized and that kind of planning because I enjoy numbers and spreadsheets. So we try and play to our strengths and understanding what those are helps.
Ananon says
I read fair play and like the concept, but what do you when your hours/availability are just not equal? My husband and I both work demanding jobs, but his work right now is exceedingly brutal (surgical residency). I’m not making excuses for him, but he just truly doesn’t have the capacity for much beyond work right now. What do you do when the division of labor just can’t be stacked evenly? Admittedly, there’s probably some creeping resentment on my end.
Annaon says
What do you do when your hours/availability are just not event? My husband and I both work demanding jobs, but he just doesn’t have the capacity for much outside of work. What do you do when the division of labor just can’t be stacked evenly? I worry there’s creeping resentment on my end…