Sunday afternoon, the kid finishes a worksheet and says "ten times for game time, right? Three to go." I have no idea if I said that. Glad it's not just us, hopefully. TodoBank parks the deal in a passbook instead of my memory — "three more to go" shows up as a balance both of us can read. On a low-energy day, the balance covers the missed page, which turns out to be the part that actually changes the week.
Sunday afternoon. The kid finishes a worksheet page, looks up, and says:
"Ten worksheets and I get game time, right? Three more to go."
...did I say that.
I might have. Ten or five, game time or a snack, I genuinely cannot remember. But in his head, the contract is signed.
If I say "no, I didn't say that," he gets called a liar and the afternoon implodes. If I say "oh right, yeah," the terms quietly drift in his favor for next time. Either way, I'm not winning.
I thought it was just our house — apparently it's a pretty standard one.
The kid remembers the deal he likes, with surprising precision. The parent threw out "if you do it ten times, sure" in the middle of something else and forgot three seconds later. The memory contest is not close.
And once it's "you said / no I didn't," I've already lost. No receipts. He says "you said so," and the best I've got is "...I don't think so... I mean... maybe?" Pretty weak.
The "buy 9, get the 10th free" punch card — you remembering where you are on it? I'm not. I find out at the register, when the barista says "one more and you get a free one." Airline miles, drinks-with-coworkers verbal IOUs, same deal.
People can't track "how many more until the reward" in their head. So the store keeps the count for them, on a little paper card.
Asking the kid to track it himself is, frankly, asking a lot.
TodoBank, the app we're building, parks the deal — the reward promise — in a passbook instead of in the parent's memory.
Setup is small. Open one passbook, write the deal in the notes ("ten pages for one snack"). Each time the kid finishes a worksheet page, he "deposits" it into the passbook. The balance grows.
"Three more" stops being my fuzzy memory and shows up as a number. He sees it, I see it. Same number. There's no he-said-I-said because the passbook said.
Our kid runs in waves. On a good day he tears through five pages. On a bad day he won't touch the workbook. Zero or one hundred.
On a zero day, we "withdraw." Take a chunk off yesterday's overage and apply it to today's quota. The page count for today is zero, but the balance still moves — net for the week is still up. A normal 0/1 chore chart treats a zero day as a clean miss; with a balance, the savings absorb it. Today off, the week not blown.
Honestly, I'd prefer he just did the daily amount, daily. But asking a wavy kid for a perfectly flat output is more about my preference than his actual rhythm. If the total is moving, we're calling it fine.
Funny part: once there's a passbook, something kicks in and he wants to pad it. On a good day he started depositing a little more than the quota. "I'm just gonna play tomorrow, so I'll bank some now" — I didn't say that, he did.
That's scheduling, basically.
In work terms, it's just a WBS move — "next week's meetings are stacked, let me front-load this week." Same structure. A project with no WBS forces you to hit the same output every week or fall behind; from the inside, it feels like a death march. Every day the same grind, no end in sight. Tiring, in a specific way.
An eight-year-old doesn't need a real schedule yet. But picking up "you can front-load a task" by feel — actually pretty useful. Crank harder today, take tomorrow off. You'll use that move for the rest of your life.
A couple of things while we're here.
Kid figures out he can tap "deposit" a hundred times to inflate the balance? Of course he does. There's an optional password on deposits. Doesn't have to be on. If he forgets the password (or there isn't one), a simple mental-math problem unlocks it, so he never gets locked out.
No interest. Real banks pay interest; this one doesn't. The flip side is, the balance doesn't shrink either. Yesterday's effort just stays. Honestly that's enough.
Accounts can go negative. "Borrow against next week" works as a feature, but if you live in the red, next week shows up tired. Don't lean on it.
One more, for the parent side. When the kid first starts banking, it's exciting and you want to push — "more! more!" — and the kid burns out fast. (Asking from experience.) Easy on the throttle.
I don't think this app is forever. Once he can hold the deals in his own head, he won't need it. Until then, it's a cane for the parent's memory.
(I wish there were an app for my memory too, but probably that's a different one.)
So today, again, I showed him the screen — "three more, says the passbook" — and quietly fulfilled a promise I had completely forgotten making. Zero parental authority. Anyway.