This is the Key To Living an Authentic and Trouble-Free Life

Why you should practice the concept of 'Task Separation' to significantly improve your quality of life.

Do these Situations resonate with You?

• Your parents tell you to do your homework or eat healthily.

• A person tries to convince their friend to go to the gym.

• You thoughtfully gift your friend a book. You become annoyed that they still haven’t started it despite being reminded to read.

• Your friend is in a toxic relationship. Breaking up seems inevitable, but despite their awareness and your efforts to encourage action, they continue the toxic cycle. This frustrates you, “Can they just break up already?!”.

Now, I invite you to take a moment, reread the points, and think about what they have in common.

Ready to continue?

At all times, somebody tries to control the outcome of someone else’s task by interfering with another person’s responsibility. This is called task interference.

• It’s the child’s task to study and eat healthily.

• It’s the friend’s task to read a book or work out.

• It’s the friend’s task to break up with their partner.

Today, I want to discuss the concept of task separation from Adler’s psychology. I find it particularly helpful in nurturing healthy relationships and living a happier, calmer, more focused, and purposeful life. Let’s dive into the details.

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What is Task Separation?

Task Separation derived from Adlerian Psychology clearly distinguishes between personal responsibilities and those of others. One achieves this by thinking from the perspective of “Whose task is this”? If one isn’t responsible for the result, it’s not their task. If we want to live a life without interpersonal relationship problems, we must respect the autonomy of other people’s tasks by not interfering.

Why Practice Task Separation?

There are several reasons why we should practice task separation.

Enable Self-reliant Growth

Responsibilities in life require us to grow and develop as self-reliant human beings. Interfering in people’s tasks prevents them from developing as self-reliant human beings.

No Control

You cannot do the tasks of others. It doesn’t matter how skilled someone is at persuading. They won’t get their friend to work out because, ultimately, they cannot do the workout for them. The task is simply out of their control.

What do you lose?

Doing anything always comes at the cost of not doing something else. In this case, it’s your task. We all have limited attention spans and energy throughout the day. If people fail to separate tasks, they invest their energy, attention and efforts into things whose outcomes they can’t control. Doesn’t sound like a good deal, does it?

You can do many things in the world and even more things you cannot. You’ll already be plenty busy and significantly more successful in focusing on your tasks.

Vulnerability

People tend to identify with their tasks and base their success and self-worth on the outcomes. This means if we see other people’s tasks as our tasks, their uncontrollable outcome will undeniably affect us.

For instance, you might feel sad your friend still hasn’t managed to break up with their toxic partner. Someone who fails to separate the task ‘to break up’, might get easily frustrated and energy drained in the process of trying to complete the tasks for them. No matter the task, we make ourselves emotionally vulnerable one way or another. In that sense, practising task separation is also a way of practising self-love because you protect yourself from uncontrollable events.

Problems

People interfering in each other’s tasks is the most common source of interpersonal relationship problems. People don’t like their tasks to be interfered with. It communicates distrust in the person’s capability to do their tasks independently. As Adler says, “All problems are interpersonal relationship problems”. By respecting the boundaries of people’s tasks, you can significantly reduce troubles in your life.

Task Separation in Parenting

Let’s discuss an example where people tend to give up on the concept of task separation. Parenting. It’s highly relevant to discuss because the list of parents interfering with their children’s tasks is endlessly long.

Let’s inspect the example of parents pushing their child to study. By asking, “Whose task is this? Who controls the end result?” it becomes clear it’s the child’s task. In the end, the child must understand the material and write the exam. Even if parents combined all their power to force their child to study, only the child controls whether or not they’re truly studying and soaking up the learning material. Because it’s not the parents' task, they mustn’t interfere with their kids' task to study.

Most parents have a hard time accepting this. They tend to respond with, “It’s the parent’s task to ensure their children study” or, “It’s only for the child’s good”. This sounds reasonable, right? Well, let’s dig a bit deeper…

Is it really for Their Good?

“You are not really doing it for the sake of your child when you say ‘it is for their own good to study’”.

Hearing this can be controversial, especially if you’re a parent. Let’s go further with the example of parents pushing their child to study. Are they really doing that for their children or perhaps their own good?

One hidden motivation parents might have is that they want their kids to look good in society’s eyes. Many parents live the illusion they’re doing it for their child’s good when, in reality, they don’t want to be seen as bad parents by other people because their child is not living up to societal expectations. Parents sometimes subconsciously disguise their own goals as “for the child’s sake” to justify their behaviour of interfering in their child’s tasks. In this example, the parent’s goal can be to look good in society’s eyes.

Few parents are ill-intended but act out of genuine concern for their children. However, task interference remains a task interference. Reasons for interference can be various. Some parents are obsessed with their desire to control something. Other parents might attempt to fix their mistakes by interfering in their child’s tasks. Another reason parents interfere is because they’re scared of their children’s self-reliance. It can be as simple as loving their child and fearing the thought they might soon become independent. Such a goal is often unconsciously triggered, leading to various types of task interference.

Love makes you blind

From an interpersonal perspective, what does forcing children to study lead to? Conflict. It results in arguments, anger, frustrated emotions, and interpersonal problems. This cannot be for the good of any party involved.

What’s the Point?

Have you ever enjoyed studying when you were forced to do so? Of course not. So why would you do it to your children? It gets your mood down. The child studies only for their parent’s sake. This is what I call rock-bottom motivation.

The Goal of Parenting

What is the goal of parenting? It’s self-reliance. The whole point of parenthood is raising your children to become self-reliant, so they can one day leave the house.

Teaching children responsibility for their tasks is the key aspect of self-reliance. If parents make the child’s task to study theirs, they also communicate this to the children. This prevents the child from developing intrinsic motivation or learning self-reliance.

What if Parents push Their Children to Study Nonetheless?

Let’s say someone decides to make their children study against their will, and the child gets good grades. Parents would likely feel approved of their actions and continue the behaviour. However, the outcome isn’t what’s important here.

Instead of focusing on short-term results, parents should see the big picture; teaching self-reliance. Arguing they’re too young to do their tasks is a grave underestimation of a child’s capabilities. If parents proceed with this behaviour, the child will never study with personal conviction. In the eyes of the child, the goal is to please their parents. These are dynamics likely to contribute to regular conflict, bad parent-child relationships and an unhappier life.

I’m not saying parents should stop caring for their children. To find out what parents should do, let’s leave this example momentarily and return to the general concept of task separation.

What can we do instead?

Firstly, it’s important to communicate who is responsible for what tasks. You’d be surprised how many times responsibilities get mixed up. With responsibilities in place, we can avoid task interference with clear boundaries, ensuring they aren’t crossed.

Secondly, you can support. Let them know they can reach out anytime. All support, which doesn’t involve doing the tasks of another, is truly the greatest help you can provide.

In the parenting example, we should first teach children that studying is a task they must take care of. This first step is critical. Secondly, parents should support their children. For example, they can be told to ask anytime if they need help. Offer advice. Offer study support. Be there for them when they share frustrations and struggles. Support them on their learning journey without taking over their task. Anything to nurture their intrinsic motivation instead of forcing studying onto them.

If they fail, have them feel the consequences. They need to make their own experiences and learn from them.

Some situations might be different. Especially regarding sensitive topics, we should adjust our approach. Let’s say you want to help a friend.

What can We do Step-By-Step to Help Someone?

1. If you want to help someone, you must first acknowledge it’s out of your control. Don’t give yourself false hopes — you cannot help them — they only can help themselves.

2. Engage in a conversation and identify whether they want to be helped. If they don’t, don’t bother trying. It will be like talking to a wall. End the conversation by saying, if they ever need support, you are there for them to reach out to.

3. If they are open-minded, you can identify ways to support them. For example, by telling them of an idea or offering an open ear. They might accept it or not. It’s up to them.

You can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make it drink.

What concrete steps can we take?

Firstly, taking a moment to reflect on your life is critical. Are you interfering in any people’s tasks? Are people interfering in your tasks? If yes, ensure there will be no more task interference. You can achieve this through communication.

In a nutshell, what can we do from now?

1. Actively Practice Task Separation: Stop passively taking on tasks throughout your day. Instead, make it an active decision. Reflect on what you do in your daily life by asking, “Whose task is this?”. You can start now by answering this question for the tasks you did yesterday/ today.

2. Avoid Task Interference: You can achieve this by setting clear boundaries which you won’t tolerate getting crossed. One such boundary could be: If anyone works on your tasks without your approval, you talk to them immediately to tell them how you feel and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

3. Offer support: This can be any support without actually doing the task for someone. For instance, you can provide them helpful information, feedback, or emotional support.

That’s all! Life can be simple, right? At the very least, it certainly will be simpler if people respect each other’s tasks more.

Last Words

The concept of ‘Task Separation’ is one of my favourites from Adler’s Psychology. It greatly helped me nurture positive relationships and go about my daily life with more purpose, focus and control. What are your experiences with task separation? Let me know in the comments. I’ll also be sharing more insightful concepts from Adler’s Psychology in the near future.

Until next time,
Calvin