Split

When one task secretly contains several different kinds of work, cut it into separate pieces so each piece can go to whoever or whatever is actually right for it.

Your dad comes home from hip surgery and you tell your sister you will "handle the care stuff." Three weeks in, you are driving to two appointments a week, fighting the insurance portal at midnight, reheating food you meant to cook, and skipping the one thing he actually asked for, which was somebody to sit with him in the afternoon. Your sister keeps offering to help. You cannot name a single thing to give her.

The cue is a single label covering pieces that are not alike. Split means cutting that lump along four seams: the kind of thinking involved, how much is at stake, who is allowed to see the information, and what you want to stay good at yourself. Do it in three steps. List the actual pieces, not the label. Mark where any two pieces differ on those four seams. Cut there, and name each piece by the output it produces. What changes is that the work becomes handable: rides and grocery runs go to your sister, appointment times live on a shared calendar, insurance calls become one Thursday block, and the afternoon hours stay yours because presence is the whole product. Do not split work whose pieces only make sense together, like the conversation with him about assisted living.