When people say relationships are work, they generally mean that for them to succeed, both parties need to make an effort, not take each other for granted, and so on. After all, your partner or spouse isn’t a parent (or child) that takes care of you or needs to be constantly managed.

But this couple decided to take the work aspect of relationships very seriously. In a viral TikTok, a woman details how she used management techniques when she and her boyfriend were struggling. She put him “on probation” and used daily and weekly task sheets to help him focus. And, perhaps surprisingly, it worked and they are still together.

The one thing most people don’t expect in their relationships are weekly performance reviews

Image credits: nadeenhui

“I’m going to share with you guys how I PIP’d my boyfriend in real life”

“For those of you not in tech, PIP stands for Performance Improvement Plan and it’s what you get put on when they’re about to fire you. So my boyfriend and I were having a lot of issues in the beginning, like a lot. And ultimately, I felt like we weren’t compatible even though we had a lot of love for each other. So as a last straw, we decided to do, like, a performance improvement plan. And before you come at me, I know it’s kind of harsh to some of you, but he’s an engineer and sometimes it’s really hard to communicate with him without using something that he can already relate to, plus he kind of liked it.”

This woman was going through a rough patch with her boyfriend, so she implemented a probation period and weekly meetings to help their relationship

Image credits: Parabol (not the actual photo)

“So we had a shared note with daily and weekly tasks he needed to do and a set of things that he needed to work on. And it worked out really well”

“Like, even now, for our household chores, things that he’s responsible for, we use a Kanban board that has been the only thing that has stuck and works. Like anything I need done, I just add it onto the Kanban board and he’ll get it done. But if I just tell him, he’ll forget about it. We also do weekly retrospectives where we check in with each other at the end of each week to see how we’re doing and that’s my favorite.”

You can watch the full video here

@nadeenhui we started living together really early on in our relationship so we saw all of each others living habits and lifestyles super quickly. and i honestly think it worked out better this way because we could decide if we actually wanted to work on these lifestyle habits together or split up. since it was so new, there wouldn’t be much love lost and we’d still be friends. but ultimately, we decided that we wanna stay together, and these lifestyle changes were for the better so why not do it? i had to learn to be more accepting and easy going, and he had to learn to be more tidy and considerate of shared spaces. #relationshipadvice #softwareengineerlife #lifeintech #girlsintech ♬ original sound – nadeen

Sometimes cohabitation can be a death sentence for an otherwise successful relationship

Image credits: Liza Summer (not the actual photo)

The woman in the video mentioned some relationship issues, mostly based on resentment. She felt her partner was not helping with household chores enough, and would, reportedly, forget about things she told him to do. These and similar issues arise quite frequently when a couple chooses to live together for the first time. While dating, most of the focus is on fun activities and not the day-to-day running of a household. However, many people have enough life experiences to understand that this might be the case. Often enough, the choice to start living together is mentally considered to be a test of the relationship.

After all, you wouldn’t want to commit to a long-term relationship with someone before seeing how they act in private, and how they actually live. Better to try living together before marriage or buying property, otherwise you might end up tied to a relationship you end up hating. Research indicates that roughly two years is the cutoff period, where the relationship ends. Older research indicates that many couples will marry after this point, but more contemporary studies point towards cohabitation as an alternative to marriage that is becoming significantly more popular. Plus, with the average US wedding costing a bit less than $40’000, it’s no surprise that most people might see it as a tad wasteful.

Good relationships mean understanding how to get through to your partner

Image credits: Priscilla Du Preez (not the actual photo)

Commenters were divided, some seeing the woman’s methods as a weird application of management strategies in personal relationships and others agreeing that they can work. While the language she uses is very corporate, like who uses the term Performance Improvement Plan for their love life without cracking up, the idea to utilize the unique way your partner sees the world is clever. The idea of different people having different love languages isn’t new, and research supports the idea that a good relationship will consist of both parties ‘using’ the correct one with their partner. So it stands to reason that other forms of motivation will work as well. In this story, the boyfriend seems to prefer clear lists of tasks, rather than verbal reminders.

So consider how to use this in your own relationship with a partner, or maybe even a child or stubborn parent. In teaching, methods like gamification have been found to increase the academic results of some students. This involves making the studying process more similar to a game, with scores, badges, and trophies the students could “win” by playing. Now, gamification is just one example and it does not work for everyone. It just goes to show that different people can be motivated in different ways. The boyfriend in this story seemed to respond very positively to corporate-speak, which might be a first.

Some commenters laughed at the concept, while others shared their stories of management techniques in relationships

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