As entrepreneurs we spend a lot of time trying to maximise our productivity in our business, but we often forget to apply those same productivity / delegation / negotiation skills at home!

So let’s talk about that…. 

The light bulb moment in that regard for me came after reading Eve Rodsky’s book Fair Play. Essentially Fair Play is about identifying and delegating or “gameafying” all of the things that need to happen in your world each week—not just the physical load, but the mental load too. 

The first step is the identification of those tasks so that we’re both aware of what actually has to happen. (You know… like buying the present, wrapping paper and card for the school friend’s birthday party on the weekend and then actually wrapping the present and taking your child to the party!) 

Even the step of identifying the tasks with your partner goes a long way to “eliminating the cranky” that I used to experience when I felt as though Heath had “no idea how much I’ve got on my plate!” (Sound familiar…😉)

Your weekly tasks list might include things like:

• Groceries

• Cooking

• Garbage

• Washing and/or dry cleaning

• Home maintenance

• School lunches

• Extracurricular activities

• Sporting Games

• Playdates for kids

• Social Events

• Monitoring screen time

• Kids dinner/bath/bedtime

This is just a list of 12 tasks, but the true list could be more like 100. It’s important that the list is really diverse and robust because there is so much that goes into our day-to-day lives.

From here the idea is that you divvy up all of the tasks into your areas of strength. (You can buy Fair Play cards to help you do this, or you can simply print them out too.)

You start by volunteering for the tasks you’re happy to take on because they are manageable or make the most sense for you each to do. And then it’s time to start negotiating on the ones that are left over, because you can’t leave any task on the table! Once all the cards are divided up, both parties have a really clear understanding of what their responsibility is and what they’re in charge of.

Just knowing what is not my responsibility means that I can take it off my list, shut down that tab in my brain and then just not think about it anymore.

(If you and your partner have a nightly stand-off about making kids lunches… you have to listen to this week’s podcast episode! I think you’ll relate!)

When you divide up the tasks,  you also decide how long this season will be, whether that’s for the next week / month / term / year. Whenever that period is up it’s time to review and potentially swap some tasks, as necessary. 

The Fair Play system has been such a game changer for us when it comes to knowing what needs to be done—and not resenting one another for doing/not doing particular tasks! 

If you don’t have a system for regular tasks in your household, I highly recommend giving this a go!