A review by basilroad
Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live) by Eve Rodsky

informative slow-paced

1.5

I liked the premise of this book, but the more I read about the rules of "Fair Play" the less I liked the idea. It was overcomplicated, lacking nuance and not actually focussed on the key issue which is the time we have available. The cards are arbitrary and not comparable in length of time they take and a huge amount of time would be needed to continuously manage tasks in this way. There's no flexibility to split "CPE" even though to me a partnership fundamentally involves shared responsibilities - I realise that here I just disagree with Rodsky's premise. She assumes we all have a village of other people to call on, or infinite time to fit in all aspects of a task, or the time to plan each task in minute detail before starting to ensure the whole thing can be completed with no surprises. The final thing that struck me was how ableist this book is, assuming that everyone is able to complete the CPE for every task when in reality there are numerous reasons why this may not be feasible. By the end the lack of nuance and realism was frustrating and means I will not be trying the Fair Play system, as much as I was hoping it might provide a new toolkit to navigate these sorts of conversations.
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