Her New York Times bestselling book and Reese’s Book Club Pick, Fair Play, a gamified life-management system that helps partners rebalance their domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, has elevated the cultural conversation about the value of unpaid labor and care. In her highly anticipated follow-up, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, Rodsky explores the cross-section between the science of creativity, productivity, and resilience. Described as the ‘antidote to physical, mental, and emotional burnout,’ Rodsky aims to inspire a new narrative around the equality of time and the individual right to personal time choice that influences sustainable and lasting change on a policy level. Rodsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Seth and their three children.
We need a cultural shift in recognition that all time is created equal. My hope is that society recognizes that an hour at the pediatrician’s office holding a child’s hand is just as valuable as an hour in the boardroom. Time is counted in valuable fleeting minutes, connection, and legacy, not dollars. And every domestic task, both visible and invisible, physical and mental, has a quantifiable time component. Most women can attest and have personally experienced the minutes quickly add up… so the question is: how can women reclaim their time? It is only when both you and your partner believe that you both should have a choice over how you use your time (and there is no default for any domestic task)—that’s when the division of labor will shift toward parity in your relationship and women can step into their full power outside of the home.
“Mesearch” – how do you start to look at a problem when everyone is gaslighting you and telling you it’s not a problem. I started my journey into the “gendered division of labor” (and other related phrases like “emotional labor” and the “second shift”) by reading every book and article I could get my hands on. I was aware that women shoulder about two-thirds of the work required to run a home and raise a family but I wasn’t sure why. Early on in my research, I came across an article titled “Invisible Work,” written in 1987 by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels. In it, she argues that women’s unpaid “invisible” work in the home is often not seen as “work” at all and is significantly devalued. The article had a real impact on me and informed my initial quest—which was to make the invisible domestic tasks I did visible to my husband. My thinking was that it is impossible to value what’s invisible and I believed visibility would equal value. So I created a “Sh*t I Do” spreadsheet. With the help of women across the country, I cataloged every single action I took in service of my family that had a quantifiable time component. But here’s the thing—while the “Shit I Do” list illuminated how much invisible work women were doing for their families, the list also seemed to provoke more rage (and scorekeeping!) than change. I soon realized that my expertise in family mediation, law, and organizational management could be applied to this problem—to create a system to promote sustainable change and get past the resentment and rage. Fair Play is a system tested by couples from all walks of life. At its core is a card game—where couples each hold domestic task cards representing all that it takes to run a home and raise a family.
But what do you then do with all this new found time? That’s where Unicorn Space comes into play.
Unicorn Space is time you create and allot space for in your schedule to reclaim, or discover and nurture, the natural gifts and interests that make you uniquely you and that you share with the world. For many of us, and women specifically, when a teeth cleaning feels like an indulgence, the idea of carving out Unicorn Space seems like a fantasy… and it will remain the stuff of fairytales until you and your partner are able to rebalance the workload between you (or create true boundaries if you are unpartnered). Once you put a new system in place that optimizes efficiency and frees up some of your time, you and your partner must both assert your right to Unicorn Space without asking for permission or feeling guilty because it is essential to your ongoing sense of self, the health of your partnership, and your ability to convey what a whole life looks like to your family, friends, and community. Unicorn Space is the end game. It will give your life purpose beyond partnering, professional duties and parenting.
Recently launched the non-profit Fair Play Policy Institute to focus on policies and systems change using the Fair Play research and work.
I use the same concepts in the Fair Play system with everything I do. Boundaries, Systems & Communication
Music
My cousin, Jessica Berman – commission of the National Women’s Soccer League
Every article that is examining the collapse of the nuclear family ideal and the recognition that it takes SO MANY other people and resources to raise children.
