Sharing the mental load

When is school break? Did we send Grandma a birthday card? Can we fit in grocery shopping Friday night instead of Saturday morning so we aren’t in a rush before guests arrive? Where is the extra comforter? Maybe they need a fan in case the room gets stuffy? Do we have their flight number in case they get delayed? What will we do to fill the time if they are delayed?

If this train of thought is familiar, you know the mental load. Perhaps no one feels this weight like busy parents. The default parent — the one who’s responsible for organizing the family schedule, knowing what school activities or deadlines are coming up, managing relationships with teachers, babysitters and friends’ parents, shopping for clothing, setting up doctor appointments — carries so much in their brain. While many tech tools try to help us manage it through lists, reminders and productivity hacks, it’s still there, in our brains. The default parent can make a list to give their partner, but that’s one more giving them one more task to do. and doing.

The current productivity market has missed a huge opportunity to create more efficient ways to communicate, work together and actually share the mental load. They help us collect and delegate tasks, but how can we truly share the mental load if we aren’t fundamentally addressing how we think about everything required to keep a household, family and/or relationship going?

We need tools that help manage the load, but we more desperately need ones that help change how we think, communicate and collaborate across this invisible work. We need Bosa.

Collecting your goals and tasks in one central place is table stakes. It’s required before you can effectively communicate and collaborate across the mental load. That’s why we built goal collection features first, making it easy for you to add specific tasks as well as more vague aspirations to Bosa. The real magic is what you do next, including adding your partner as a collaborator on goals and tapping into our new ChatGPT-powered smart search and AI assistant to prioritize, find themes, and get ideas on where to start.

Because when you need support to get it done — including those goals that are just for you! — tools that only help you manage the load aren’t enough. It’s time for tech to start helping us communicate, collaborate and share the load.

Have suggestions? Let us know in the comments or reply to this email to share your perspective and ideas.