Tool 85 · Develop yourself
Help that removes capacity is still expensive, however kindly meant.
A guided 15 to 19 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
Doing it for them is the quickest and the most expensive.
What is this costing you?
What you'll explore
A note from Mark
There's a difference between doing something for somebody, doing it with them, and making it possible for them to do it themselves.
The first one is the quickest, so it wins, and after a while it's the only one left.
I always ask what the person actually requested. Usually a fraction of what's being done.
And I ask what it's costing the helper, because that's the part nobody counts until it's already been paid.
What you'll get
01
The ask
02
The list
03
The line
04
What to hand back
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
What now?
01 · Save it
What they asked for.
02 · Test it
Hand one specific thing back this month, and say you are doing it.
What I would do
Write the full list, including the invisible parts.
Mark what was requested and what was assumed.
Ask which items they could do with more time rather than more help.
Price the cost to you honestly.
Hand one thing back, and say so out loud rather than withdrawing quietly.
Test it
What did they actually ask for?
What could they do themselves, with time?
What is this costing you?
The alternative
The usual reading is that a helper needs to step back. Sometimes the help is well judged, the other person genuinely cannot do these things at the moment, and the real issue is that nobody is helping the helper. The reverse also happens. Somebody has been managing another adult's life for years out of love, and both of them have forgotten what that adult can do.
Think about this
Take this to Ask Mark
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
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If the worry is bigger than the help
Further thinking
Give and Take
Adam Grant
Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis
Stephen Karpman
Relatives of the Impaired Elderly: Correlates of Feelings of Burden
Steven Zarit
Book
Adam Grant
Grant's finding that givers occupy both the top and the bottom of most performance distributions is the practical heart of this. What separates them is not generosity but whether the giving is bounded. If you have ever concluded that you should do more while quietly running out of road, read this before you add anything.
Article
Stephen Karpman
The original seven page paper that introduced the drama triangle, free to read and much less confident than the workshop version of it that followed. The Rescuer position is the part worth your attention: help that solves a problem the other person could have solved, and so removes the occasion for them to learn.
Article
Steven Zarit
The work behind the caregiver burden scale. It makes the load measurable, which matters when one person is quietly carrying most of it.
Book
Julie Lythcott-Haims
A former Stanford dean on what over-involvement costs children later. Useful for parents whose intentions are good and whose habits are heavy.
Book
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
The readable account of self-determination theory, written by the man who spent forty years testing it. The finding that matters here is that rewards and approval reliably change why people do things, and that behaviour which survives without either is telling you something the rest is not. It gives you a usable test rather than a feeling.