Methodology
The science behind measuring the mental load
In short : The MLI (Mental Load Index) is Mental Loadless's measure of each adult's share of a household's mental load, from 0 to 100. It weights every task by the phase of Daminger's cycle each person carries — anticipate 1.5, monitor 1.25, identify 1, decide 0.75, execute 0.5 — and its method is published.
We measure something nobody was measuring: who anticipates, who checks, who carries the household in their head. Here is the scientific model, the exact weights, the words we forbid ourselves, and the academic work all of it rests on.
By YF · updated
The starting point: the Daminger cycle (2019)
In 2019, sociologist Allison Daminger published an analysis in the American Sociological Review that changed how the mental load can be discussed. Instead of a vague block of "invisible work", she describes a cognitive cycle of four to five phases that every household task moves through:
- Anticipate — spotting a future need before it becomes a problem. "We are going to have to sign the kids up for the February holiday club."
- Identify — searching, comparing, gathering the possible options.
- Decide — choosing between those options.
- Execute — doing the concrete thing, the one you can tick off.
- Monitor — checking it actually got done, and staying accountable if it did not.
The decisive contribution of this breakdown: the phases are not distributed the same way within a couple. Execution is often the most shared. Anticipation and monitoring, almost never. That is where the gap sits between "we share everything" and the exhaustion of exactly one of the two.
Mental Loadless measures the mental load phase by phase. That is the whole difference between counting actions and understanding who carries the household.
Why a to-do list measures nothing
A task list records who did what. That is accurate information, and it is the wrong information.
Take a real task: signing the child up for school lunches. B thinks of it in September, B finds the form, B decides how many days, B reminds A to drop it off, A drops it off, B checks on Monday that the registration went through. In a to-do list, the line is ticked by A.
A task executed by A but anticipated, planned and verified by B is B's load. That is what the Mental Loadless cognitive graph captures: each task carries, alongside its executor, who anticipated it, identified it, decided it and monitored it. Plus its domain (8 life domains), its cadence, its emotional weight, and the negotiated standard — "it is done when…", agreed by both, which defuses the re-checking described by Mederer as far back as 1993.
And none of it asks anything more of you
The obvious risk of such a model would be to make creating a task unbearable. There is not one extra field to fill in: the creator is presumed to be the anticipator, the assignee the executor, the rest is inferred, then refined by a weekly heuristic pass that uses no AI at all. A 12-question onboarding establishes the likely referent for each domain. You use the app normally; the measurement builds itself behind you.
The MLI: a published methodology, not a black box
The MLI (Mental Load Index) expresses the share of the household's mental load carried by each adult, on a 0-100 scale that sums to 100. "We're at 68/32" is a sentence you can say out loud — that is deliberate.
For every owned phase, the calculation multiplies the phase weight, the cadence weight, the domain weight and the task's emotional weight; the total is then normalized.
The weights, version 1.0
| Phase | Weight v1.0 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Anticipate | 1.5 | Spotting a need before it becomes a problem |
| Monitor | 1.25 | Checking it is done, and done right |
| Identify | 1.0 | Researching and comparing the options |
| Decide | 0.75 — 0 if decided together | Choosing between the options |
| Execute | 0.5 | Doing the task |
Two factors then multiply that weight: the task's cadence (one-off ×1.3, daily ×1.0) and its emotional weight (light ×0.5, neutral ×1, heavy ×1.5). In version 1.0, all eight life domains weigh 1.0.
Execution weighs the least. That is a deliberate inversion of every family organization app on the market, which counts precisely the opposite. A decision genuinely made together counts as zero on both sides: a shared call is nobody's load.
These numbers are not a trade secret. The methodology is versioned (v1.0) and published inside the application itself, on the in-app methodology screen. You can read it, disagree with it, and know exactly what changed when it evolves. A measurement you cannot audit does not deserve the trust it asks for.
The computation runs server-side, as a weekly snapshot, and self-reported feelings are encrypted.
A calculation from start to finish: the school lunch sign-up
Back to the school lunch sign-up. It is a one-off task (×1.3) with a neutral emotional weight (×1). B anticipates, identifies, decides and checks it; A executes it.
| Phase | Who | Calculation | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anticipate | B | 1.5 × 1.3 | 1.95 |
| Identify | B | 1.0 × 1.3 | 1.30 |
| Decide | B | 0.75 × 1.3 | 0.975 |
| Execute | A | 0.5 × 1.3 | 0.65 |
| Monitor | B | 1.25 × 1.3 | 1.625 |
The household totals 6.5 points on this task. B carries 5.85 of them, an MLI of 90; A carries 0.65, an MLI of 10. On the equity index, which only looks at anticipating and monitoring, B carries 100%. A to-do list would have credited the task to A.
Had A and B set the number of days together, the decision would count as zero for each: B would drop to 88.2 and A would rise to 11.8. On a real household the calculation is the same, summed over every task, then each share is brought back to 100.
The equity index: anticipation and monitoring, nothing else
Alongside the overall MLI, a second indicator looks at two phases only: anticipate and monitor. Never execution.
It is the numerical answer to the most common sentence in couples counseling: "I carry all of it in my head, even when he — or she — is the one doing it." As long as execution is counted along with everything else, that experience is statistically invisible. Isolate it, and it becomes data.
Equity is not measured against a 50/50 ideal. The couple sets its own target — a deliberate 60/40 during a heavy period is a legitimate choice — and the app measures the gap to that target. A 70/30 chosen and held is a contract honored, not a problem. A period of imbalance can even be declared explicitly, from two weeks to six months, with no "reason" field to fill in: during that time, banners and nudges go quiet. The app never guilt-trips a consented asymmetry.
Cross-perception: three numbers instead of one
Once a month, each partner estimates two things with two sliders: the share they believe they carry, and the share they believe the other carries. Those estimates are then set against the measurement.
- What I believe I carry
- What I am believed to carry
- What is measured
The gap between those three numbers is often more instructive than the measurement alone. It turns a disagreement ("but I do just as much as you") into an observable object, external to both people. It is no longer your word against theirs: it is three numbers on the same screen.
On top of that sits a trend signal: a 30-second weekly check-in (rumination, energy, satisfaction) and an eight-week curve. Below two data points, the app shows nothing rather than a "stable" that does not exist. Check-ins are encrypted.
The vocabulary we chose — and the vocabulary we ban
Measuring how a load is divided inside a couple is a delicate act. Word choice is not decoration: it is part of the product, and it is enforced automatically across the app's copy, in all nine languages.
The banned words
- "Score", "ranking", "less than", "should" — anything that installs a grade, a winner and a party at fault
- All clinical vocabulary: burnout, depression, diagnosis, symptom. An app has no business putting a medical label on a person
The product's words
- Distribution and balance. A load is divided; it is not won.
The positioning fits in one sentence, and it structures every product decision: the app measures and organizes; the professional interprets. We supply usable numbers and neutral language. What those numbers mean inside your relationship belongs to you — and, if you want, to a therapist or a mediator.
The practitioner export: getting the measurement off the phone
A factual one-to-two-page PDF, generated server-side, summarizes the past month: MLI, equity against the target you set, cross-perception, check-ins, domain transfers. It is designed to be put on the table of a couples therapist or a family mediator, instead of the twenty minutes usually spent trying to summarize.
It carries an explicit disclaimer: the app measures, the professional interprets. It is produced from the same data as the monthly report shown on screen — so the PDF cannot tell a different story from the one you have already seen. It is available in nine languages, and it is strictly single-household: even in shared custody, it never contains the other parent's data.
The collective barometer: measurement beyond one household
Households that want to can contribute to an anonymous collective barometer: aggregated distributions, computed once a month, giving a picture of the mental load across families at the scale of the user base.
- Strict opt-in: two separate toggles (academic research / barometer). Absence of an answer counts as refusal — never consent by default. Revocable with one tap.
- K-anonymity: nothing is published below 10 households in a category. A statistic that would let you recognize one family is not a statistic, it is a leak.
- No individual data ever leaves.
The longer-term aim is an annual state of the mental load in families, published and methodologically defensible. It will only ship when the thresholds are genuinely met.
See the measurement on your own household
Mental Loadless is available on the App Store and Google Play, in 9 languages, hosted in the European Union. The full methodology, with its weights and its version number, is readable in the app before you have any data at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is the MLI?
The MLI (Mental Load Index) is a 0 to 100 index expressing each adult's share of a household's mental load; the shares add up to 100. It counts who anticipates, identifies, decides, executes and checks each task, not just who does it.
Why does execution weigh the least in the MLI?
Because execution is the most visible and most shared phase, while anticipating and checking usually stay with one person. The MLI therefore weights executing at 0.5 and anticipating at 1.5, the opposite of apps that count ticked-off tasks.
Does the MLI point out who does the least?
No. The MLI describes a split, not a ranking: there is no winner and no culprit. The couple sets its own target — a 60/40 chosen during a busy period is legitimate — and the app measures the gap to that target, not to an imposed ideal.
Is the MLI calculated by artificial intelligence?
No. The calculation is deterministic: published weights, applied server-side to a weekly snapshot. The pass that refines who owns which phase is heuristic and uses no AI. The same household therefore always produces the same result.
Where can I read the full MLI method?
On this page, and inside the app on the methodology screen. The method is versioned (v1.0): any change to a weight changes the version number, and every measurement records the version that computed it.
Sources
- Daminger, A. (2019). "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor". American Sociological Review, 84(4) — the anticipate, identify, decide, execute, monitor cycle.
- Weeks, S. & Ruppanner, L. (2024). "A typology of US parents' mental loads: Core and episodic cognitive labor". Journal of Marriage and Family — the distinction between daily and one-off cognitive labor.
- Dean, L., Churchill, B. & Ruppanner, L. (2022). "The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor overload women and mothers". Community, Work & Family, 25(1).
- Mederer, H. J. (1993). "Division of Labor in Two-Earner Homes: Task Accomplishment versus Household Management". Journal of Marriage and Family, 55(1) — the origin of the negotiated standard.
- Haicault, M. (1984). "La gestion ordinaire de la vie en deux". Sociologie du travail, 26(3) — the founding French-language text on mental load.