5 hacks for helping working parents reduce the mental load

Work emails ping as they come in. A text reminder flashes: Empty bottles are needed for science class tomorrow. The dog’s out of food. A soccer tournament just got moved to next weekend. The babysitter needs to get booked for Saturday. For millions of working parents, this isn’t a chaotic moment—it’s just Monday.

The mental load—the invisible, relentless work of managing a household—includes anticipating, tracking, and executing everything from dentist appointments to birthday gifts to dinner plans. It is a full-time job embedded inside the rest of your life. It’s no wonder that 48% of parents say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming.

This burden also falls disproportionately on women. In dual-career households, it’s often female partners carrying the majority of the logistical load, causing anxiety, depression, and burnout.

As the founder of Jam, a company building tools to reduce this mental load on families, I’ve interviewed hundreds of working parents—executives, teachers, writers, designers—about how they manage the logistics of their lives. (Spoiler: No one is as put together as they look from the outside.) 

As a result, I’ve also had the opportunity to see what behaviors and systems actually do work in lessening stress and chaos, as well as one very common trap that almost always makes things worse. With the new school year underway, now is the perfect time for a reset. Here are five proven strategies to lighten the load.

1. Implement the Sunday Sync

This small weekly habit packs a huge punch. A Sunday Sync is a 15–30 minute meeting to review the week ahead: scheduling, to-dos, grocery needs, childcare coverage. Did that work dinner make it onto the calendar? Who’s handling pickup on Wednesday? 

A good Sync covers both granular and high-level planning: the upcoming week and a peek at the month ahead. In families with school-age kids, everyone can be included—and should be. 

There are a few easily realized benefits to a family Sunday Sync. First, it mitigates the friction before it starts. (It’s easier to find a ride for someone three days in advance as opposed to realizing it the morning of.) Second, it allows everyone in the family to get on the same page for the week—which lessens the mental burden on parents to carry it all themselves.

2. Create a Single Digital Information Hub

Families today juggle school portals, team apps, shared calendars, and never-ending group text chains. Instead of glancing at one calendar, you’re scouring texts, emails, and crumpled flyers in the bottom of a backpack just to find out where and when the basketball tryouts are this week.

The one not-so-great habit we saw consistently in almost every family? Attempting to coordinate everything through text with a partner. Grocery lists, pickup reminders, PDFs, and permission slips all buried alongside memes and “what’s for dinner?” messages is a recipe for stress—things inevitably falling through the cracks.

Text is great for quick check-ins. But it’s not a planning tool. Important information gets lost, one partner ends up doing the heavy lifting, and the mental load creeps back in. Instead, rely on your shared hub and review it during your Sunday Sync. Save texting for the cute kids pics. 

Thriving families tend to use one centralized place for all essential info: schedules, school events, to-do’s, contacts and carpools. This hub should sync with all other calendars, house shared to-dos and shopping lists, and allow access for kids or caregivers with appropriate permissions. Bonus points if it easily allows families to tag who is going to events and who is driving, as well as having AI-powered features to ease the burden of scheduling.

It might be a shared calendar or even a shared family Notion hub, but the key is that all adults have equal access to it so that one person doesn’t have to be the default manager of the family. (And yes, your hub must be digital so changes can be made and synced on the fly, and no, texting does not count as a hub.)

3. Reduce Decisions, Increase Traditions

Decision fatigue is real, and the micro-decisions of parenting can really add up fast: What’s for dinner? What gift to get for the birthday party? What can the kids wear for the spirit day next week? The more of these you have to make, the heavier your mental load.

One easy way to reduce decisions each week is to increase routines. Think, pizza Fridays, a treat you make for every birthday, or a habit like “Chores & Chill” Sunday afternoons. Having a few stockpiles can help as well, like a default list of go-to gifts you keep in the house (board games are a personal favorite) or a spirit day/costume bin with items that can be drawn from and repurposed all year long. In our house, Taco Tuesday started as a shortcut on a day full of commitments, but it’s now a beloved family tradition!

It may sound rigid in theory, but routines actually create breathing room. Kids thrive with predictability, and so do overwhelmed adults.

4. Automate What You Can

No need to reinvent the wheel—many weekly purchases can actually be automated. Get a working list of grocery staples and put it on auto-ship each week. Yes, you’ll likely still have to go to the store, but you’ll be purchasing less and saving time. Families also often do this with cleaning supplies, pet food, vitamins, and supplements (and usually get better prices as a result, too).

This works for chores and tasks as well: Recurring chores like a weekly dry-cleaning or monthly dog grooming can be set to the same day and time. Having a standing date night with a regular babysitter cuts down on logistics. Even switching prescriptions to a pharmacy that offers free auto-delivery can save precious time and energy. 

Often these errands or purchases feel small on their own, however automation reduces both the anticipation and execution time, as well as mitigating mishaps, which can lead to more serious time savings while also reducing energy expended on tedious tasks. 

5. Delegate (Including to AI)

The mental load is heaviest when it’s invisible and unshared. It can be hard to surrender control, but it’s essential to avoid burnout. Delegating and sharing works best when everyone gravitates toward the tasks that suit their skill sets. 

Simple household chores can also be assigned to school-age kids in the family. At first this may feel like “extra work,” but it will pay dividends quickly, both in time saved and increased responsibility and confidence.

Also consider where you can outsource some work, such as meal prep delivery, booking virtual assistant hours, or caregiving help. (Try selecting one thing to outsource and see how it impacts your mental load and time. If it’s worth it, continue it, and consider adding more.) 

Finally, parents are increasingly using AI to save time at home. It’s great at things like creating a birthday-party plan or putting together sample itineraries or packing lists for your family’s upcoming road trip. At Jam we created an AI Assistant feature that reads whole emails (like school newsletters) and pops all the events onto the calendar for you, while apps like Ollie use AI to create meal plans and grocery lists for families.  

Find Systems That Work For You

These strategies aren’t about striving for perfection. A little planning up front—a sync, a shared hub, an auto-ship order—can save hours of scrambling later, so you do have the time and bandwidth for the things you actually enjoy doing, or at least a few moments of quality time.

The mental load may not disappear, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. Remember that a few small efforts now can create big relief later. That’s the kind of ROI every parent needs.