Task Management Software Breathed New Life into My Romantic Partnership

By Paul L. Underwood

My Asana dashboard is full of to-dos. My Wunderlists? They need a little attention, but overall they’re up to date. Every day of my life, thanks to task management software, I feel prepared to get things done. Heck, sometimes I even use this stuff for work.

Like everyone these days, my wife and I are exceedingly busy. We hardly see each other during the week, and when we do, we’re either focused on the urgent task of keeping our children fed, clean and happy (and not necessarily in that order), or on tying up loose ends for work. On some special occasions, one of us will read a few pages from a book before passing out. At 9pm.

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Fortunately, we live in a golden age of task management software, and my wife is an especially strong proponent. She moved us to Google Docs back when they were novel, and now we’re on Asana and Wunderlist (which I think can be integrated, but I’m the relative luddite in this relationship). I suspect we’ll be on Slack when the kids are older, and the inevitable #soccerpractice channel becomes necessary.

But if there’s one piece of software that remains truly indispensable, it’s one we started using when our relationship was still young: Google Calendar.

I forget who started sending invites, or why, but there are two distinct possibilities: 1, My hyper organized wife (then girlfriend) just started inviting me to stuff to keep her own life organized; 2, A doctor I was seeing recommended scheduling everything from dates to, shall we say, more intimate encounters. The rationale is that, while it may seem unromantic to literally schedule your alone time, what’s actually unromantic is skipping out on romance altogether because you’re too damn busy. Hoping for “the mood” to spontaneously strike both of you at the same time is like waiting for lightning to strike — twice.

In any case, we now live scheduled lives, and it helps keep our romance alive. While most calendar invites are of the everyday sort — there’s the baby’s nine-month checkup, the weekly reminder that Wednesday is trash day — some promise something a little more enticing. Nothing confirms a date night like seeing it in our shared calendar. (Special occasions like birthdays offer a hint of additional intrigue in the form of “Location: TBD.”) We’re overdue for a vacation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a vacation planning session pops up in one of our calendars soon. (That’s how we got ourselves to Italy a few years back. Well, that and the financial freedom that came with being childless. I should really get an Asana board going for that one, too…)

Should you take the plunge and begin scheduling your most romantic moments via the company responsible for the world’s most popular search engine? Well, if you find yourself too busy, tired, or preoccupied for sex (or even for less physical intimate activities, like a shared drink or a conversation), you might want to consider it. After all, you’ve probably used a calendared event to avoid intimacy. (“I can’t tonight. I’ve got a breakfast early in the morning with that editor I’ve been pitching.”)

And hey, it just might give you something to look forward to after that end of day catch-up you scheduled with your old boss. You won’t even have to wait for lightning to strike.

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