Leisure and Lifestyle
To see if your founding group has agreement about this topic, you may want to include it in discussions early on. Alternatively, you may choose to table the discussion until you have a full membership that can agree together how much of a priority group activities and individual leisure opportunities will be.
- At this point, we are very frugal about leisure and entertainment expenditures.
- At this point, we are somewhat frugal about leisure and entertainment expenditures.
- We allocate a ____ funds to leisure and entertainment.
- Leisure time is a high priority, but not necessarily expensive.
- We are going to need everyone prioritizing work consistently, with only x days/hours off per week.
Role Assignments
Decide whether your group will have rotating roles or long-term assignments based on training for a specific skill set. If rotating, how often do they rotate?
Unofficial roles:
There are also unofficial roles we take on during meetings or group projects: the superhero problem solver, caretaker, scapegoat, confidante (secret keeper), or the public face. Sometimes the time these tasks take can be unacknowledged. Making these unofficial roles part of ones official assignment can even out the workload. Rotating these unofficial duties can give all members a greater appreciation of the time and effort needed to maintain these roles.
You may find it helpful to discuss how personality traits affect permanent and rotating work assignments. See our presentation of how various traits can be strengths and weaknesses within intentional communities.
Leadership roles:
From the page Team Up: Roles of Your Core Founders Group, you may have decided on leadership roles, which could be rotating or long-term assignments. Descriptions of roles at that page are grouped as corporate leader titles or board of directors titles. Here we suggest more egalitarian-sounding roles.
- Chief Meeting Coordinator:
- Chief Notetaker and Document Keeper:
- Chief Outreach Coordinator:
- Chief Factfinder:
- Chief Bean Counter:
Work roles:
For work assignments you can draw from the lists in the Skills profile questions category if you find it a challenge to think of jobs that need to be filled. See the page on physical security from external intruders, if extra concern is warranted.
Pet tending:
Once you are established in a physical location, animals could be part of your team.
- Sanitation: Cats can be your natural rodent prevention.
- Security: Dogs can be your night watch guards. Usually they’ll do double duty as therapeutic pets.
- Weed control: If rural or semi-rural, small goats can mow a large weedy area.
- Mowing: Where a food forest needs to be protected and only the grass needs to be kept manageable, sheep are often preferred.
Weekly Meal Chart for Cooking and Cleanup Assignment
For groups in which all or most take turns cooking and cleaning up after meals, here is a simple meal chart where people’s names can be entered in the spaces, depending on their availability the coming week. This system offers a lot of flexibility. You might build in flexibility by allowing busier members to pay their way out of chores, which could help others who need the extra work.
Recommended Resources
Participation and Work in Community: An online course from The Foundation for Intentional Community (a separate organization from ICmatch)