The question I hear most from Doms setting up tasks for the first time is some version of how many tasks to give a sub when you’re just starting out. For a long time my answer was a shrug and “start small and see how it goes,” which is fine advice but doesn’t help much when you’re staring at an empty list trying to decide between three tasks and fifteen.
So I finally looked at our anonymous usage numbers to see if they had a better answer, and they pretty much do (with a caveat I’ll get to).
How many tasks to give a sub: what the numbers say
I looked at totals across every couple who paired up more than 45 days ago, which came to 1,090 relationships, and sorted them by how many regular tasks (everyday tasks, not rewards or consequences, with a repeating task counted once) the couple created in the first week after pairing. Then I checked how far each couple got, counting the days where at least one task was completed. Reaching 7 of those days means the routine got off the ground, and reaching 30 means it stuck around for a while.
The numbers:
| Tasks created in week one | Couples | Reached 7+ days | Reached 30+ days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 175 | 11.4% | 2.9% |
| 1 to 2 | 156 | 21.8% | 4.5% |
| 3 to 5 | 125 | 49.6% | 21.6% |
| 6 to 10 | 179 | 65.9% | 38.0% |
| 11 to 20 | 236 | 69.1% | 39.0% |
| 21+ | 219 | 74.0% | 42.9% |
Couples who started with 3 to 5 tasks made it to 30 days about 22% of the time, and that number jumps to 38% for the 6 to 10 group. After 10 the line pretty much flattens out (39% for 11 to 20, 43% for 21 or more), so piling on more tasks past that point doesn’t buy you a lot.
Of the 175 couples who paired up and created zero tasks that first week, only 5 made it to 30 days. I’d guess most of them downloaded the app, sent the invite and then life happened before anyone wrote a first task.
A note on privacy. These are counts, added up across more than a thousand couples. Nobody looked at anyone’s account, and nobody read a single task. Everything you write in SubTasks (task names, notes, messages, rewards) is encrypted, and none of it was part of this. We counted how many tasks couples created, never what they said. Our privacy policy has the details, and you can opt out of usage analytics any time by emailing privacy@subtasksapp.com.
What this data can’t tell you
This is a correlation and I want to be upfront about that. Couples who are excited and committed to making a dynamic work are also the ones who sit down on day one and write out eight tasks, so some of that 38% is the commitment showing up in the setup. Writing more tasks won’t make your sub more invested on its own.
What I’m comfortable saying is that starting with 6 to 10 tasks costs you nothing compared to starting tiny, and it may help. A list with some substance gives your sub enough to build a routine around, and by the end of the second week you’ll have enough completions to see which tasks are landing.
Too many is a problem too
The 21+ group looks fine in the table, but overwhelm is a thing. A big kit imported all at once can turn into a wall of tasks your sub dreads opening, and once that feeling sets in it’s hard to undo, so for a first week I’d keep the list on the smaller side even if you’ve got a notebook full of ideas.
How many tasks to give a sub, sized to their time
So size the 6 to 10 to the time your sub has. This is roughly how I’d do it:
- A few minutes a day: about 6 small tasks
- 15 to 30 minutes most days: about 8
- An hour or more: about 10
- Weekends or special occasions only: about 6, mostly weekly
If 6 still feels like a lot for your sub, start with 5 and add one a week once things settle in.
Starting numbers for points, rewards, and consequences
Once you have the tasks you need an economy around them, and this is the part where being the Dom starts to feel like being a game designer (you’re balancing a whole economy for one player). We don’t have data on point values or reward prices yet, so what follows is my best guess at a balanced starting point and you should expect to change it in the first couple of weeks.
- Points by effort. 1 point for something that takes a few minutes, 3 for 15 to 30 minutes, 5 for an hour or more. Your sub can look at a task and predict what it’s worth.
- A small reward priced so a steady sub can earn it in 2 to 3 days. That gives them an early win in the first week.
- A big reward priced at about 2 weeks of steady work, so there’s something to save toward.
- 1 demerit per missed task, which keeps the math simple and visible to both of you.
- A light consequence at 3 demerits. One bad day won’t trigger it but a bad pattern will.
- A firmer consequence at 7 demerits, only if you’ve both talked about wanting that kind of weight.
As a quick example, if your sub’s list adds up to around 15 points on a good day, the small reward would sit somewhere around 35 or 40 points and the big one around 200. If they’re blowing through rewards in the first week, raise the prices a bit, and lower them if a whole week goes by without anything earned. There’s a longer walkthrough of tuning this in our post on building a points and rewards economy.
A sample first week
Here’s what an 8-task list could look like for a sub with 15 to 30 minutes most days. It’s an example to steal from (or ignore), and the point values follow the effort rule from the section above.
| Task | How often | Points | Why it’s on the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make the bed before leaving the room | Daily | 1 | A tiny win first thing in the morning |
| Drink a full glass of water with breakfast | Daily | 1 | Easy to do and easy to remember |
| Send a good-morning message with one plan for the day | Daily | 1 | Keeps you in their head from the start |
| 15-minute tidy of one room | Daily | 3 | Visible progress at home |
| Write three lines about the day before bed | Daily | 3 | Gives you something to read and respond to |
| 20-minute walk or workout | 3 times a week | 3 | Something for their body, not only the house |
| Plan and cook one proper dinner | Weekly | 5 | A bigger effort to look forward to |
| Weekend check-in about how the week felt | Weekly | 5 | Where you adjust the list together |
On a good day that list earns somewhere around 12 to 15 points, which lines up with the reward example above. You’ll notice most of it is small and daily, with a couple of weekly tasks that take more effort, and that mix is deliberate (daily tasks give your sub a reason to open the app every day and the weekly ones give the week some shape).
If you want something a little spicier, swap one of the household tasks for something from your own dynamic. I’d keep the overall count where it is though, at least until the first check-in.
Picking the tasks themselves
For a first list I’d lean mostly on small daily tasks that give your sub a reason to open the app every day, with one or two bigger ones mixed in. If you need ideas, our task ideas for beginners and 30 daily tasks for submissives are good places to grab a handful from. For the Dom side of things there’s a broader guide to Dom tasks, and once the first month is behind you, how to train a submissive picks up where this post leaves off.
Talk through the list with your sub before it goes live. They’ll know better than you whether 8 tasks fits into their actual week.
What to adjust after week one
The weekend check-in is where the numbers from this post stop mattering and your sub’s actual week takes over. A few things are worth looking at together.
If most days ended with everything done and your sub seems a bit bored, the list is probably too easy, so add one task or swap an easy one for something with more weight to it. If some tasks got skipped over and over, ask about those specifically, because a task that keeps getting missed usually has a reason behind it (the timing is wrong for their day, or they never liked it in the first place) and that’s more useful to know than the demerit count.
Watch the rewards too. If your sub earned the small reward on day two and is already eyeing the big one, prices are too low. If nothing got earned at all, they’re too high or the list is too hard, and either way a sub who can’t reach anything stops trying pretty quickly.
And if the week felt heavy for either of you, cut back. Dropping from 8 tasks to 6 for a while is a normal part of tuning a dynamic, and plenty of couples go through a few rounds of growing and trimming the list before it settles. Our guide on how to train a submissive goes further into reading these signals over the long run.
Build your first kit
If you’d rather start from something than a blank screen, try Build Your Kit. Pick “My partner. They’ll be doing the tasks.” and answer seven questions about your dynamic, and it puts together a starter kit of tasks, rewards, and consequences that you can swap around until it fits. You can save it to a SubTasks account and set the point values from there using the numbers above. It’s free.