4min snip

The Double Win cover image

LAURA VANDERKAM: Flexing With Time and Tasks

The Double Win

NOTE

The Art of Delegation and Overcoming Guilt in Household Responsibilities

Recognizing that household tasks like laundry are often not remembered by children helps alleviate the guilt associated with delegation. It is efficient to focus on responsibilities that only you can handle, such as being a partner or parent, while outsourcing tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning, which can be done by others. The priority should be on engaging in activities that truly matter to personal and family life, rather than being bogged down by less impactful chores. Additionally, assessing work-life balance should involve identifying if time is spent on low-value tasks instead of specialized work that provides greater economic benefits. The use of services like grocery delivery reflects an understanding that not every chore needs to be self-managed. Ultimately, embracing assistance in household responsibilities is a normalized practice and can contribute positively to overall well-being without guilt.

00:00
Speaker 2
From a home perspective, one of the things I've realized is my, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, my kids probably won't remember that I did the laundry. You know, that's not normally, not that it's not important. It's very important for people to have clean clothes, myself included, but that's probably not something that my kids when they're, you know, we're at their rehearsal dinner for their wedding, you know, they're going to be like, my mom really was consistent doing the laundry. You know, it's probably not going to happen. I wish it wouldn't. I mean, I feel like we deserve that credit. So that's something that I delegate or like volunteering in the classroom for me. I just don't do it. I send stuff all the time. I'm like, listen, you need me to send something. I'm your girl. Like, please text me. I'll make it happen. You know, you need 48 cupcakes. It's done. But those are some of the things that I've done on my side. How do think about delegating things on the home side without feeling guilt or identifying those things?
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the guilt part is sort of, you know, I'm sorry that people feel guilt about this. I mean, for starters, I think I'm not if your partner doesn't feel guilt about not doing it, then probably you should follow whatever that pattern is. That's a good point. But also, you know, I don't feel guilt at work, because I have people working with me doing things. It's just that it's helping to magnify my impact, right? It doesn't make sense for me to be doing, I don't know, email formatting and then, you know, not writing a book or running my podcast because I'm so busy doing various administrative tasks or something. And so it's the same on the home front. There are certain things that only you can do. Presumably, you can be the partner to your other half, you certainly hope so. Only you can, and there are other parents, can be the parent to your children. But lots of people can do your laundry. Lots of people can do other things like grocery shopping, or cooking, or home maintenance, or mowing the lawn, or whatever else it is. And so trying to make sure that you are focusing your time on those things that matter. And then, you know, make sure that you're trading off the right things. I mean, I had a conversation with a physician the other day who was considering what she wanted her work schedule to look And she was working really long days on certain days and often other days. And she's like, well, I'd like to have that time to, you know, do errands, but it means I have really long, you know, hours on other days. And it's like, well, okay, I'm betting that you could get somebody else to do your errands for you. Like you are trading off. It's one thing to say, I wanna work fewer hours because I wanna hang out with my kids. Or I wanna hang out with my family, I wanna go see my parents who are getting older, I wanna be involved in my community, doing all these things. Great, blessing for you. If you are working fewer hours just to do laundry and errands and things like that, I think, you know, there's an economic problem there that you're gonna earn a lot more doing your specialized, highly paid labor, And you can have somebody else go do your grocery shopping for you. And that might be the way to
Speaker 2
do it. And we're probably already doing this in so many ways. I mean, if you subscribe and save on Amazon, or if you ever use Instacart or Shipt, you're already doing that. Those people are not your household employees per se, but they are people who are doing some of those tasks that, as it turns out, I think we all learned during COVID, we're not the only people that can do.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. I mean, sometimes people have some sort of guilt about certain kinds of outsourcing, but nobody does everything for themselves. I mean, you mail a letter, you are not driving it to Wisconsin on your own. Like, you are not churning your own butter. Most people are not darning their own socks. Like, there are so many things that we do not do. And so it's just a question of where is the line? And I think that there, you can choose all sorts of places where the line can be and still feel very good about your life.

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