Tracking domestic labor?

madprime · February 10, 2020, 9:51pm

This is an idea I’ve been kicking around – I’ve been wondering about tracking chores & domestic labor (e.g. childcare). I’m going to come out and admit it’s been a source of tension in the past (but that’s pretty common!).

I think it’s interesting in part because I think there’s a perception/awareness issue. Someone once told me: “if you don’t think you’re doing 50%, you aren’t”: in other words, you probably think you’re doing more than you actually are, because other people’s work is often invisible to you.

Tracking this might be something to somehow do jointly with my partner, although I think he’d prefer not to have to do much. (I wonder if he could respond to what I track with noting how aware he was of those things?) And one thing I wonder about is whether it’s important (or even possible?) to somehow account for “mental load” (i.e. the planning, not just the work itself).

I guess a first step for me would be to try regularly journaling on the topic (to build reflection on the phenomenon). @Agaricus said he remembered seeing someone share a chores related project in the past & I’d welcome any ideas others might have.

madprime · February 14, 2020, 10:59pm

An update (maybe this should become another project log) – I tried using Reporter which @gedankenstuecke pointed me to, to try to track this phenomenon but almost immediately found it unsatisfying. (It is looking useful for mood tracking – I’ll keep evaluating there!)

Randomly self-surveying myself isn’t capturing some qualia I’m concerned about here. The thing I wish I could study (and quantify if possible) isn’t the chores/tasks themselves but the awareness & planning those things.

Recording what I’m working on at a given moment in response to a prompt isn’t doing much to capture that. It’s just asking what I happening to be doing at that moment, not me thinking about what I need to do. And to be honest, when I’m really busy I have trouble doing a self-survey. It also slowed me down to try to categorize what I was doing. (Am I cooking? or is packing lunches a new category of task, and needs a new tag?)

During our “open office hours” videochat, @skjonas had a really cool suggestion – to try using Shortcuts (also iOS) to record quick notes via voice, and make a note any time I think about something that needs to get done. Hopefully it’ll be timestamped. I like that this idea seems easier to do in the moment, and doesn’t force me to try to categorize anything (I know I can later use coding for qualitative data). We’ll see if I can figure out how to set it up.

It’s a little unclear what question I’m trying to ask at this point. Something along the lines of “how much mental load do I have? how much of it is my partner aware of / how does it compare to his experience?” but there’s probably other questions to explore (what themes emerge in coded data? etc.).

gedankenstuecke · February 17, 2020, 4:04pm

I’m curious about the Shortcuts app (I used earlier versions of it for making individual buttons on iOS), did you already try the Siri integration and how it works?

techzeel · March 1, 2024, 10:04am

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