Sharing the Load: Conception, Planning & Execution

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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}