Ever feel like you're juggling ALL the things? š©
You know, work, home, life... while STILL feeling totally overwhelmed?
Well, I'm diving into a book that's got everyone buzzing ā Fair Play by Eve Rodsky.
This oneās for my ladies š«¶, but guys ā DONāT check out.
You need to hear this too.
Tune in NOW.
Xo,
Sari
ā”ļøFREE FB GROUP FOR PLAINTIFF & CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEYS/
āYou're not supposed to carry the entire mental load for everyone else while pretending it's no big deal. If youāre juggling 17 things, somethingās gonna drop ā and it shouldnāt always be you. Itās time to stop making invisible work invisible.ā
sari de la motte
265 TRANSCRIPTION
Well, welcome everybody to another episode of From Hostage To Hero. As I mentioned earlier, I'll be trying to review at least one book a month and let you know my thoughts on what it had that was good, what it had that I didn't think was so good, and whether or not you should check it out. So the first book of this series that I'm going to be doing is called Fair Play. I don't know if you can see that, Fair Play. It is written by Eve Rodsky, and it is a New York Times bestseller. It says, A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much To Do And More Life To Live. And so that's what we're talking about today is the hidden cost of emotional labor because that's really what this book is all about. So this book is written by a lawyer, Eve Rodsky. And what she talks about in this book, and it's primarily written for women, but men, I want you to stay tuned. One, because you need to hear this shit, and two, because I'm going to make this applicable for you, particularly at work.
But it's primarily written for women about how women take on all of the mental load. You'll also hear emotional labor. It's the same thing when being talked about in various circles. And I want to talk about what that means and how we can change it. So she talks about every task that needs to be done, and she talks primarily about home tasks. So we know the research shows that even if women and men work the same amount of time outside of the home, that women on the regular spend more time, way more time on household tasks and child care than men do across the board without exception. And so she talks about how every task, and again, it's mostly actual household tasks and child care and that kind of thing.
Every task has three parts, and the way I'm going to talk about this today, I'm going to also say that this can apply to work and how you can use it at work and how I plan to use it at work. So the three parts are, CP and E. C stands for conception. P stands for planning, and E stands for execution. So what that means is every task, somebody needs to think, "Oh, this needs to be done," that's the conception, that this is even a need is a conception. P is for planning. "Here's how this should be done or here's how I plan to do this thing." And E is execution. Now, she also has, I didn't have it here today to show you because it's upstairs in my bedroom, but she also has an actual deck. That's why she calls the book Fair Play because she's actually made it into a game.
And she has a deck of 100 cards. She went and she interviewed hundreds if not thousands of women and put together a task list that across the board tends to cover nearly everything you can think about that needs to be done for a home, whether there's just two people living in it or whether the people have children. But there's a whole, a hundred cards. And so one of the things that she talks about is if you do not hold the C and the P part of a task, meaning the conception, the planning, you are only in charge of the execution. Technically, you do not get to hold that card, meaning you don't get to say, "This is a card. This is what I take on." So for example, in my life with Kevin who I adore and love, we've talked about this extensively because of especially a lot of my health issues, Kevin has taken on so much of the execution of tasks.
But when we sat down and we really looked at this and we used her model of whoever has the C and the P part of the task, the conception and the planning, is the person that holds the card. And we went through the 100 cards, I held 67 of them and he held 33, and that was an eye-opener for both of us. Because here's the issue is that when you are in charge, even if you are not physically, and women, I know, you're like, "Amen," and all over the place right now. Even if you are physically not doing the task, you still have the mental load or the emotional labor of the task. So it's not completely cleared off of your schedule.
I mean, this is why I who has a fairy godmother, that's what we call our household manager, who has housekeepers that come twice a month, who has a landscaper that comes twice a month, who has five employees and six lawyer coaches, and a very helpful onboard husband who's all about things being fair, and lots of support for my kid and people who love her and are willing to take her when needed, this is how a person like me, and I know I'm also probably mirroring many of you, can still feel totally and completely fucken overwhelmed and stressed out of their mind.
This is the hidden cost of emotional labor, and that is why I wanted to do a podcast on this book particularly because we tend to get, especially as women, we tend to beat up ourselves because we are not doing all the things. And this is particularly true. If we have all the help that I mentioned or even any help, then we think, "Well, what the hell is my problem? I have more help than most people have and I still can't fucken get it together." Does this sound familiar? This is why this is important. The fact is that if you are still holding a card because you're doing the conception and the planning, you're holding the whole card.
So you really are doing way more than you think you're doing even if you're not executing on the tasks. So for example, let's say that you have a house manager like I do, and if you don't and you can afford it, and you probably can, so don't tell yourself you can't, absolutely do this. It's essential. But let's say that this person goes grocery shopping for you. This does not mean that this person gets to hold the grocery card. Why? Because you are the person, if you are in fact the person in your household that has to decide that the groceries need to get done in the first place and what groceries you need and when those groceries should be picked up, and what's the brand that you normally buy, and what are the stores that you're going to buy at, and what should they get if they're out of the thing that you actually need, and how many of the things do you actually need?
And to be able to answer all of those questions, you also need to do meal planning because meal planning is going to tell you how much you need of all the things. Do you see how the simple task of grocery shopping is so much bigger than actually getting in the car and going to the grocery store and filling the cart and paying for it? You need to decide, "Are we paying by Check by cash, by credit card?" Please not buy check. You're going to just piss off everybody in the checkout line. So we tend to look at something like, and from both sides we tend to look at something like grocery shopping and we go, "Well, I don't do grocery shopping anymore, so why am I so overwhelmed?" Or a person who does do grocery shopping, let's say that is the husband in the family says, "Well, I do the grocery shopping. I don't know what your problem is of why you're feeling so overwhelmed about this," has to realize that there is so much more that goes into any task than just the execution part of it.
Because here's what I really want you to start getting away from. I want you to stop getting away from making everything your fault. And particularly now I'm just speaking to women, and telling yourself things like, "I need to be better at time management. I need to get my life together. I need to do X, Y, Z because I'm just failing on every level." Unless you are accurately identifying the emotional labor and mental load that you are carrying, you do not get to have those conversations with yourself. So two things I want to say about this. First is that you need to calculate how much of that you are doing and stop thinking that you are lazy because you can't get it all done because that...
Let's just pause here for a minute. That emotional and mental load takes its toll. Now, what that may look like is not what you think it looks like. It may not look like you are running it full tilt and managing the conception and planning of all these tasks. What it may look like is you needing to take a nap at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. What it may look like is you getting up late in the morning and not exercising because you're so damn tired. What it may look like is you snapping at your significant other because you are so overwhelmed and trying to hold all the things in your head. What it may look like is you forgetting to pay a bill or forgetting an appointment, or forgetting whatever it may be, a birthday gift because you cannot carry everything in your head.
So I don't want to give you the impression that this mental load is something that is happening and you're aware of it, and you're doing that in addition to your normal job, and that's what it looks like. It often looks like things falling apart because of the stress of having that mental load and having that emotional labor. That's why I keep saying it's the hidden cost because we don't look at that. We just look at, "Oh, I slept in again. I'm such a lazy fuck." Or, "Oh, I need to take a nap. That's ridiculous." And then we just keep pushing through until we get sick. Or, "Dammit, what the fuck is wrong with me? I forgot to pay that bill. Why am I doing this?" Again, notice how we're making ourselves wrong in all those situations. And what I'm telling you is that most of the time, if not all of the time, the reasons for those things happening is not because you're lazy, it's not because you're disorganized, it's not because you're not good at time management.
It's because you are carrying the emotional and mental load, and that is the symptoms of doing that. That's really important. So when we're looking at how to fix this, yes, the first way to fix it is to recognize how much of that you are doing. And for that activity, I highly recommend that you get the fair deck card deck because you could go and just list all the things, but you're probably going to forget stuff and she's done a damn good job of really going, "Here's all the things it takes to run a household," and really looking at who is the person, not who does this, but who holds the C and the P part, who conceives of it needing to be done and plans for it to be done, right?
If you decide these three things need to be dry-cleaned and you put it in a bag by the front door and you tell your husband that this needs to go to the dry cleaner on X corner of X Street, you hold the dry cleaning card even if your husband actually takes the dry cleaning and drops it off and picks it up because of that hidden cost of emotional labor. Once you have a realistic view, you've taken this cost that was hidden and now you brought it in the forefront and you're really looking at it, I want you to forgive your fucken self for being so hard on yourself. I want you to really recognize that you've been doing way more than you thought you were doing and that you beating up on yourself was uncalled-for and unkind, and you need to say a big fucken, I'm sorry, to yourself, okay?
The third thing you need to do is change it. Now, here is what I loved about the book, and then I'm going to tell you what I hated about the book. So here's what I love about the book is that she says, no one gets to hold a card unless again, they're C or P, and that anyone can execute, but you cannot share those between spouses, hear what I mean? Or people who live together, however you want to talk about it. Here's what I mean. If you hold the dry cleaning card, you hold all of it, C, P and E. You hold the conception that this needs to be cleaned. You hold the planning of here's the dry cleaner we're going to use and how often, and you are the one that is taking it or not taking it. The only one that can be outsourced is E, but it cannot be outsourced to the other partner in the marriage or the relationship. So hear me on that.
You cannot say, "And I'm going to have my husband take it." I can say, "And I'm going to have my household manager do E," but I hold the card for dry cleaning because I have the C and the P. I can outsource E, I just cannot source it to Kevin. And same thing goes for him. So if he holds, let's say the grocery card, he can assign grocery shopping to our household manager, but he is the person who's deciding what we need to buy and how much and when. He can outsource the E, he cannot outsource it to me. He outsources it to household manager if that in fact what he wants to do, otherwise he does it himself. So that's the one rule. You can't outsource it to each other. You can outsource E, but you're still in charge. That's the big part of this part. Now, if you're like, "Okay, fine. Sorry, I'm going to give my husband the card and he's not going to fucken do it the way I want to do it," and that's part of our problem, is it not?
Where we're like, "Well, I'll just do it because he's not going to do it the right way." That's part of the problem. But she also has, because she's a lawyer, and you're going to love this. As you go through the cards, and by the way, you don't give your husband anything. This is something that you're going to do together as a couple, and you're going to decide amongst you who has what cards. But she says before you decide on who has what card for each card, so yes, this is going to take some time. You're going to decide on the minimum reasonable standard. Does that sound familiar? I love that. The minimum reasonable standard. So between the two of you, let's say someone holds the garbage card, you're going to decide before we assign it to anybody, what does this mean to hold the garbage card. And maybe in your house that means anytime the garbage comes above the top of the thing, it needs to be taken out.
And then it also means you need to run, in our case, run the bins up to the top of the hill on, I think it's Wednesday and pick them up on Thursday morning. That would be minimum reasonable standard. And that you need to replace, I'm thinking more things, the bag in the receptacle once the gut garbage is taken out. So in our house, that would be the minimum reasonable standard. You have to do that for each card so you do not get into those arguments about, "Well, you did it, but you didn't do it my way." No, we decide on our way, and then you decide who's going to hold what card. Now, here's what she says in the book is that you can decide who's going to hold the card this week, today, this month. You decide on the timeframe. It's not that you divvy up the cards and then that's it for the rest of your life on this planet.
You can redesign and reshuffle the cards as much or as less as you like. If it's working, you don't need to. If it's not, you can come back and discuss. And she talks about having regular check-ins and all the things, and I'll let her take over on that. The one thing before I talk about how to use this at work that I did not like about the book is her absolute total cow tallying, cow tailing. What is that word that I'm looking for about how you need to talk to your husband about this. And we need to start out slow and we don't need to divvy up 50/50, and she has scripts for how you talk to your husband. And I was like, "Oh, hell no." If your husband needs to be handled with kid gloves and walk around so you don't break his fragile ego because you're inviting him to participate fairly in your house, you've got bigger problems than this book can solve.
So that was a big turn-off, and it may be such a turn-off for some of you that wouldn't even enjoy the book, but I thought the concept itself was so great that I wanted to share the concept. So I'll leave it up to you whether you want to get the book or not, at least get the cards and you can use this podcast on how to use them. Now, here's how I'm planning on using it at work, and I think this is revolutionary. I haven't done it yet, but I'm planning on it, is that we're going to do this for all of our tasks at work. And I don't mean tasks by little tasks, I mean projects. So at work, what I'm planning to do is, let's take the podcast.
Someone is going to be in charge of podcasts, meaning they're going to be in charge of deciding that we have a podcast and how often we have a podcast that's already been decided, but in case we ever have changes, this would go under this person and they're going to plan for when that happens, and they're going to oversee the project, meaning there's many people that come in to work on a podcast, right? I mean, this 30 minute podcast, 20, 30 minute podcast you guys get, takes hours and hours to get to you. You're welcome. But it does. I have to first decide what I'm going to podcast on, and then I've got to outline. So I've got something in my brain that I know I'm going to talk about, and then I've got to actually record it, which involves Kevin. So however long it takes to record, he also has to set up all that equipment and record it, and then he has to edit it.
Not that I ever have any... I rarely ever have something where it's like, "Let's edit that out." I normally go beginning to end, and he loves that, because why wouldn't you? But he needs to put the intro and he needs put the outro? And then he sends it over to our marketing team who then has to listen to it, and then they have to write the copy, and then they have to upload it, and then they have to post it to the website and all of the things. So there are a lot of people that come in to do one task, a lot of execution. But in my office, what I'm about to start implementing is somebody's in charge of that. Meaning if something goes wrong, nobody gets to point fingers and go, "Well, it's because of this or it's because of that. It's because of this."
The person who holds that overseeing is the person that makes sure it gets all done. How much time would that free up in your world if at work you knew that someone else was in charge and you've decided ahead of time what the minimum reasonable standard is? Meaning you've said, "This is how I want this done." They have agreed and they've taken it on. That frees you up so much, so much brain space, and then you monitor that and you have the check-ins, and if it's not getting done the way you want it done, then again, as I said before, we either have a people problem or process problem.
Either they don't understand the minimum reasonable standard or they're unwilling to meet it. It's really simple. It's going to take some practice to get there, but it's really simple when we think about it. Now, when you're talking about the minimum reasonable standard, you've got to keep in mind the concept of doing B minus work. You all want A plus on everything, and I get it, so do I. But sometimes you're going to have to let things slide. Sometimes you're going to have to agree with your partner that you don't need to do a finished cleaning on the house because the finished cleaning is like, we're picking up furniture, we're getting in corners, we're like washing windows. And sometimes you don't fucken need to do that. So that's what I mean by B minus work. Is the house clean? Is it vacuumed and dusted, and all the things? This is before we had a housekeeper, then that's probably fine.
Okay, maybe once a quarter we do a finished clean. So when you're having those discussions, I want you to keep that concept of B minus work in your mind because it's really important that if you are demanding perfection from yourself, from your spouse, from your team, you're not going to get that. Now, there's some places where you're going to say, "Absolutely, this needs to be at this level and nothing less," and I agree. For me, that's client communication. That is where we don't want typos. We want it to be timely. That, I want, if not perfect, damn near close, but I cannot hold my team to that standard for every last thing in our business. Now, the last thing that she talks about, big concepts, she talks about a lot of things, but these big concepts, is the concept of unicorn space. And what she means by that is each one of you, if there's two of you that are a head of a household, need to claim space for yourselves every week.
And by doing this Fair Play system, that's really what it allows you to do. In that you each have a time that is set aside for you to get back to who you were before you were carrying around this huge emotional labor, this hidden emotional labor. What would that look like? Is it two hours every Saturday afternoon and then your partner gets two hours every Sunday afternoon? And that's to either read or paint or go on a run or do whatever that makes you you. You have to have that as part of the equation. So that is my review and let's say recommendation or not of Fair Play, the book from Eve Rodsky. I think the concepts are terrific. Kevin and I are going to be sitting down here shortly and actually now doing the minimum reasonable standard and divvying up the cards. Again, her whole deference to making sure we don't piss off the husbands by doing this really gets on my fucken nerves.
So for that reason, that turned me way off. But if anything, if you can get around the concept and get the cards, they themselves are quite lovely and get a lot of work done for you ahead of time. So I highly recommend those. You can get both of them on Amazon. I do not get anything from this, just something someone recommended to me. I picked it up. I thought the concept was fantastic, and I think we can also use it at work. And men, make sure if your wives do come and talk to you about this, that you don't fucken freak out and make me wrong about her needing that part in the book. That's what I will say about that. All right, let me know if you get the book or the cards or how it works for you. And I'll also keep you updated on what's happening over here. Talk soon.
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