#13 Be the Change You Want to See in the World With Micha Fritz

Updated: Sep 15, 2022

Have you ever had childcare plans fall through and you had to take your child to work?

How did people react? Did you feel judged for not having your life under control? Or were you congratulated on your excellent multitasking?

Your response may depend on whether you’re male or female, says Micha Fritz. The activist and social entrepreneur had exactly that happen to him when his wife went on her first overseas work trip after giving birth, and he ended up having to give a speech while he was literally holding the baby. "Afterwards all the people came to me and were like, “Ey, so super, so avant-garde,” he says. "And I just asked two people, “Would you have said the same thing to my wife, or would she just have been really badly organised?” And their faces just fell, because they realised.”

Micha has made a career of driving change, making the world better, being a positive role model. But since he became a father, he also sees the changes that need to happen at home. It started with a parenting workshop that his wife set up just for the two of them when they were first juggling parenthood and care work - complete with "the flipchart, and the brainstorming, the prototyping and the presentation.” 🤓

He explains it beautifully in today’s podcast, but in case you want to try this at home, here’s an overview of what they did:

📝 Together, brainstorm a list of every task you can think of linked to child- and home-care.

🗓 Organise the list into daily, weekly, monthly, annual tasks.

⏱ Work out roughly how much time is spent on each task, in total, in an average month / year.

👫 Split that time between the people actually doing those tasks.

👩‍❤️‍👨 Add up the totals and if the balance is completely off, make it fairer! (Tip - it helps to take each other’s individual strengths into account when redistributing tasks)

"We realised that my wife was doing about 750 or 760 hours, and I was doing about 200,” says Micha. So they fixed that.

You can hear about that and more in his wonderfully wise, witty and irreverent podcast here:

🎧 on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BoSQbIioZRGOsEaEvDj6f

Youtube: https://youtu.be/i9QCfJqSBBg

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