an instrument for the mental load · iOS
The half of the work that nobody counts
Some of the work in a house has a clock on it. The rest — noticing, remembering, planning, carrying it between one occasion and the next — has never been counted by anything. Champignon counts it, and publishes how.
Two splits, and neither of them is a verdict
The instinct is to show one number: 68 / 32. The trouble with one number is that it is instantly arguable — yes, because I work fifty hours — and an app that shows it has taken a side.
So Champignon shows two things that are hard to argue with instead. What your own hours — paid work, commuting, other obligations — suggest each of you could take on, and what actually happens. The distance between them is the reading. The app never has to claim that an even split is right; an even split is drawn as a reference mark, and a reference mark is not a target.
It also separates the doing — the time and effort of carrying a task out — from the carrying: noticing it is coming, working out the options, deciding, and checking it got done. Tell me what needs doing and I'll do it is precisely an even split of the doing sitting on top of a completely one-sided split of the carrying, and an instrument that cannot show that is not measuring the mental load at all.
The instrument is published
A number two people are going to argue about should be one they can check. So everything behind it is on this site: the formulas, all 402 tasks with the weights they ship with, the research each weight leans on, and — the part no one else publishes — the list of constants that are a judgement rather than a measurement, marked as judgements.
The model
What a point is and what it is not, why the carrying does not scale with time, and the capacity model that concedes long hours before it asks anybody for anything.
The library
402 tasks across 18 categories and 122 groups, every field visible, 106 of them carrying a written reason for the number.
The arguing
The library is the part of this that is genuinely unfinished. Tell us what is missing, or which weight sits in the wrong place — no account, one screen.
What it refuses to do
Most of the design decisions in this project are refusals, and they are load-bearing rather than tasteful.
- It sends nothing anywhere. No account, no login, no cloud, no analytics on anything about your relationship. Not a setting you switch on — there is no code in the app that talks to a network.
- No streaks, badges, or confetti. The one exemption is a ring that shows how much of the picture has been described, and it measures completeness only.
- No red and green on a split. Nothing in the app colours a share by whether it is good.
- No population statistics. A figure about the average couple says nothing about any particular one — and a partner who does more than the average is right to reject an app that opens with it.
- No language that names a person as the problem. The second user of this app is the partner who did not download it. If they open it once, feel accused, and never open it again, the app has failed, whatever the number said.
Where it is
Nearly ready to test. The model is finished and published, the library is scored, and the app is built and being checked before its first testers. This site is ahead of the app on purpose: the reasoning is the part that ought to be public first.
When it ships it will be iOS, free to download, with a complete demo household to explore. How keeping a household of your own is paid for is still being settled. It will not be a subscription, and your partner will never be charged, on any device.