Why "someone will bring ice" never works

"Someone will bring ice" is a sentence that feels like a plan and functions like nothing. It has no owner, no deadline, and no way to tell, three hours before the party, whether it happened.

A task needs three things to actually get done: a named owner, a deadline, and a visible status. Strip any one of those out and it reverts to "someone will handle it."

Volunteering works better than assigning when people actually want to pick their task — but it still needs the same three things once claimed.

The fix isn't more nagging. It's making the task list visible to everyone, so the gap between "planned" and "done" is obvious before the party starts, not during it.