Simplifying the Mental Load
You know that thing where a phone is running hot and the battery is draining quickly, and they tell you to close the hundred programs you didn’t realize were always running in the background? That’s my brain. Except I can’t close the programs or my children die homeless, naked, and hungry. That phenomenon is known as the mental load.
It’s the invisible work that makes up the position of Family CEO, because it entails all the management of being a CEO without any of the pay or recognition. This is also the only CEO position filled almost exclusively by women. Hang on, I hear the dryer ending, and I need to change over the load from our camping trip so we have clean towels before I start the dinner I prepped days ago that will expire tomorrow. BRB.
So how do we declutter our minds? We can slow down and simplify this mental space just as we have our homes and our schedules. After the birth of our first child, I was having a breakdown trying to get the diaper bag packed before we left. My husband responded in characteristically supportive fashion with “Just tell me what to get, and I’ll get it,” which sent me into a near homicidal rage. I’m exaggerating. This formative conversation did help me to see this phenomenon of the mental load, which I had never experienced before becoming a mother. Housework had always been equitable in our modern feminist household.
Delegating Responsibilities
Just as importantly, it helped me articulate it. The weight that’s crushing me isn’t the task of grabbing a diaper; it’s the responsibility of always anticipating and planning for every potential need for each outing. Now, that one conversation didn’t eliminate the burden of the mental load from my mothering life. It’s an ongoing balance that we revisit regularly as our family and life evolves. But it’s a part of the conversation in our marriage, and that makes all the difference.
To delegate is to entrust a responsibility to another person. What a perfect definition for a conversation around the mental load. Entrust responsibilities, not tasks. There’s an over-functioning/under-functioning dynamic that a lot of partners find themselves in, where one leans so far forward that there is no space for the other to do anything but lean back. To break out of this cycle, you have only to stand up straight.
Send your partner the link to this comic explaining the mental load, make a list of all your invisible responsibilities, and invite your partner to choose some. Now, here’s the part that’s going to be the hardest for you: let it go. Don’t remind, criticize, or check. Let natural consequences happen. Be truly okay with your partner’s version of completing the tasks associated with that responsibility.
Embracing a Family Calendar
For me, it feels like juggling, and when I invite my husband in to take over a responsibility, I visualize myself passing him that ball. I let it go. Then, revisit seasonally and make adjustments. Have a date night in which you go out to dinner and talk about what you’ve learned, what’s working well, what could be changed, and how you can function more fairly and efficiently.
If you’ve taken the Bucket System class, then you are all too familiar with this concept in the context of leaning back so your children can grow into this space of intrinsically motivated responsibility. If you haven’t, then I highly recommend it. Children want to participate in the work of the home to grow in their competence and feel valued. It starts young when they are 2 years old and want to cook, and when they are 3 years old and want to choose their own clothes. If you honor the independence they reach for, it will blossom.
Our family Google calendar is my sanity-saving lifeline. I put everything in the calendar and release it from my mind. It’s like an external hard drive for my brain. If I notice a kid is needing more outside time, I pick a cool nature spot and put it in the calendar. If we need to return library books, I add it to the calendar. Travel, friends, appointments – it’s all there. The calendar is how we hold the space for our priorities. I don’t have to remember any of it. We live by the calendar like a bible.
Automating the Mundane
One key feature of our calendaring system is that it syncs automatically to every family member’s devices. This means that everything doesn’t have to run through me. If your friend calls and wants to know if you can see a movie together on Saturday, you just check the calendar and either say no or add it in. If my husband’s boss wants him to fly out of town, he need only go to the calendar right there in his phone for availability and scheduling. We all have access, and we’re all on the same page, literally and figuratively.
After my family members and my calendar, my Notes are my most essential strategy for mental decluttering. That little notes app on my phone is where the bulk of my mental load lives outside of my head. Remember that juggling metaphor in which I handed some balls off? This is how I set some balls down. I put my to-do lists, shopping lists, and other reminders in there, and let them go.
We live in an attention economy, which means that your attention is being pulled from every angle. One place where most people have room to simplify the mental clutter is by automating more of those mundane, repeat tasks. Money is automatically transferred to a lot of things that we have consciously chosen on the first of each month, reducing loads of time and mental energy spent on transferring to savings and bills. Even something like grocery pickup, which may add a few bucks in tip money, reduces all the time spent and choices required wandering through grocery aisles and all the money spent on impulse buys. Look around for things you can automate, and you will lessen your mental load.
Embracing a Minimalist Wardrobe
I would include the Minimalist Wardrobe class in this category as well. My wardrobe was a stress point that siphoned significant mental energy before I overhauled my approach to shopping and getting dressed. Now, it’s basically automated.
Mom brain is a real thing, but it’s not an inherent deficiency of biological motherhood – it’s a sociological condition that we can work to improve by sharing the mental load, pulling things from the abstract into the physical realm by writing them down, and improving efficiency with automation. These four steps – delegate, calendar, list, and automate – can drastically reduce the crushing overwhelm you might be experiencing from carrying the weight of the mental load.
