Life Hack #1 : Communication ❤️

The system I use with my husband to run our household

Jun 25, 2024

Hello friends! This is the first of my life hack/tech hack weekly series that I’ll deliver along with recipes and garden joy going forward. If you’re appreciative, want more, or would just like to support me I’m happy to take requests for issues or problems you may have!

My core family (2 adults, 2 kids) lived in two different cities 800 miles apart this past year. It’s a long story. So how did we keep our families from devolving into chaos? I’ll let you know! and it has nothing to do with AI (no artificial intelligence here! it’s all communication!)

The Problem

It started with a mess of emails and texts and phone calls soon after we were living full-time in different cities with one kid each as our responsibility.

We quickly realized that even though we were in the same time zone, it was difficult to prioritize and deprioritize various issues without our daily sync. When you live together with someone, the syncing is so seamless: the casual question while you’re making toast, or another problem discussed back and forth rapidly before running out the door or shouting “don’t forget to fill out that medical form”! This is so similar to work life but it’s so true even in a personal relationship: things can devolve quickly if you can’t spend at least 10 minutes “present” with each other.

The Fix

We eventually landed on a system that works as follows:

If something is really important or sensitive, we use Signal or a phone call. (free)
If something isn’t super time sensitive, it goes into a Discord channel on a server I set up just for the two of us. ($99/yr)
If something is an actionable task that absolutely can’t get dropped we create a card in Trello. ($300/yr for pro plan)
We integrated the Trello tasks that have assigned deadlines with our household Google calendar. (free)
We have a daily sync via phone call to just make sure things are humming along nicely and to hear each other’s voices. It’s a mostly business call (not too much chatter) and then chat later when the day is over for more sweet stuff or to be goofy.

The Details

Part 1: Discord.

I joined a Discord server for a women’s social walking group in San Francisco, and I really liked the way things were organized. One day I spent way too long looking up something from a chat message and got really frustrated with the scrolling. I set up a Discord server just for Mike and I and started quickly categorizing the things we talked about the most over texts, emails and phone calls. It eventually looked like this:

All I asked for from Mike was to add messages to the various channels as they occurred to him throughout the day. This was to prevent *very* long chat discussions from developing in chat that had formerly all taken place over Signal or iMessage.

The most important thing we had to agree on was that the Discord chats were not for immediate reply. This was to keep from overwhelming each other when working or doing something important.

Again, if we needed something ASAP we use chat or a super quick phone call.

Part 2: Trello

We used Trello on and off for a few years but this year really started using it more. It’s a Kanban board app.

We have a few different “boards” but the core board is a weekly board. We list due dates but generally don’t sort by priority; the priority is determined by the due date. We found that we couldn’t assign both of us to a task, each task has one of us as the owner and it’s that person’s responsibility to complete their task or to bring it up if it can’t get done in time.

Part 3: Google Calendar

For years our household Google Calendar was the holy grail of all activity. But it eventually just got complicated enough that we added the extra steps above.

Now the majority of our calendar is school activities and holidays, trips, and todo items from Trello.

Conclusion

This system may evolve or even get shelved once we’re all living together again in a few weeks. But it worked very well when we were apart from each other for days and weeks at a time. It was so hard at first but it’s been getting easier and now we’re in the homestretch.

What do you use to run your household? Is your method much less complicated, or more? I’m so curious!