This blog post starts with “This particular lesson has shifted my worldview significantly”, and that sounds grandiose, but it’s been a good lesson for me too.

In short: author has lived in shared houses where they assign chores, and that’s always been kind of miserable; in their current configuration they instead just brag about all the great things they do for their house and it works much better.

(It’s very well written, so worth reading, though.)

Some sublessons:

• it doesn’t matter if everyone does “the same amount of work”, it just matters that everyone’s happy
• letting people specialize is nice, it gives them agency over the work they choose
• bragging, in the spirit of “I love this shared commitment and am proud to support it” is very Good Actually
• even if you’re motivated to grump, sometimes you can manually turn it into a brag in a way that feels fake but actually works still

An example of this last one: I felt like I was washing the dishes too much. I was about to say “T, I’m washing the dishes too much; can you wash the dishes more please?” But instead I said “Let me brag: I’m so good at washing the dishes the last couple days!” And everyone actually felt better even though I basically did a find-and-replace on words I was saying.

Further, letting people choose their work is, IMO, one of the key differences between life that feels meaningful and fun, and life that feels like drudgery.

Brag more, assign chores less, it’s good.