I am the CEO of dinner

A neat relationship tool

In relationships, I use the concept of the “CEO of dinner”¹. Or the “CEO of travel”. Or “CEO of the dog”. The person who is making the choices and responsible if it goes wrong².

As soon as I learned about this, it clicked. It is tiring to have to manage something, but nearly as tiring to be unsure of who is managing it and so sort of doing so anyway. This creates a lot of wasted effort if no-one knows who is actually in charge.

When we travel together, Katja plans where we go and I carry all the bags. This is our division of labour and it works really well. She likes to plan and book (and I loathe it) and together we are much happier if I am carrying a backpack and two carry on suitcases and she has nothing than if the luggage is equally split.

In economics, this is called labour specialisation. One country produces bolts and another produces apples. Each is slightly better at their thing. They trade the bolts for apples and both are better off. I don’t see why this shouldn’t be true in relationships too.

At home, my housemate Joe manages the cleaner, I manage the bills and Jugal ensures the bins are taken out. For a while each of these was sort of everyone's job, but that meant that sometimes none of it got done. And when a task got missed, we didn’t know who should have acted differently. We just sort of felt bad, with overflowing bins.

I think 2000s Feminism made a number of good points³. One such is that much of the "being CEO" of home life falls on women. And this was one thing when men mainly worked and women stayed at home⁴. But now that both men and women work, it seems reasonable to split home work. But not just home work, but the "being the CEO" bit. Who realises the bins haven't been taken out? Who gets up to hoover rather than leaving things a state? Who ensures the children are fed (even if they don't cook)?

Here then are some tasks that one can be the CEO of:

• At home:

  • Planning meals

  • Doing the washing up/ filling, emptying the dishwasher

  • Resetting private/public space

  • Managing the cleaner

  • Managing the bills

  • Doing the laundry

• Travelling:

  • Planning where to go

  • Booking

  • Packing

  • Carrying lugging

  • Navigating when out

• I don't have children, but I've lived with families:

  • Babies

    • Changing nappies

    • Breastfeeding can only by done by women, but bottle feeding, cleaning bottles etc

    • Noting down whatever complex set of data you have decided to track

    • Maintaining the travel bags

  • Children

    • Getting up

    • Morning food

    • Dressing

    • Getting to school on time

    • Managing kids if they are sick

    • Perhaps, home schooling

    • Tracking educational attainment

    • Managing emotions

• More out there:

  • Managing the emotional health of your relationship

  • Planning interesting sex

  • Setting boundaries with parents-in-law

  • Planning days out

  • Finding partners for your single friends.

  • Like 60 other things⁵

The point is that if a task has no CEO then no-one is going to bolt upright in the middle of the night and do it (or if someone is, it's always going to be the same person). But if a task is important, it's important enough to have a CEO⁶.

And being responsible for something is a bit like being on call. People are paid for even if they don't get called on. Even if everyone always tidies up, it's very different to know that if they don't, you'll have to do it. Perhaps you’ll ask everyone to do it. Again, I think that women probably feel this a lot in relationships.

Next time a task isn’t done, perhaps consider offering to be the CEO of it⁷.

1. I heard it from Cate Hall and

Sasha Chapin

2. Josh, my some-time editor, refers to this as “the mental load”. A husband and wife might share tasks around the home evenly, but generally it’s the wife who notices when something needs doing.

3. I am not particularly progressive (or conservative, for that matter)

4. Now that there are easy pathways for women to work, their revealed preferences are that many didn't want to stay at home. Though contrary to feminism, Norway's inequality shows that many does not mean all - the median woman does significantly prefer time spent with children to the median man.

5. This is one of the best comics ever made. I don’t make the rules.

6. There is an implied criticism of much of Government here. That if something goes badly no-one gets fired and if it goes well, no single person gets rich. This is a reasonable criticism.

7. And if someone has sent you this article, perhaps write a list of tasks in your relationship that you are both CEO of and see if this is a pointed signal.