I’m Not Paying Some Privileged, Single, Child-Free Male To Tell Me Lies

Even though they’re the same lies he tells himself

I recently read a great piece where the author concluded that she wasn’t willing to pay a male life coach to teach her how to be successful, and for good reason. I kinda liked the way she put it.

“Pay a coachy bro thousands to tell me the lie he tells himself to make himself feel like he’s earned that money? Nah, lol.”

The fact is the self-help space is packed full of mostly young, single, child-free men, who genuinely seem to think that they have something to teach married (or single) working moms, and it’s both frustrating and hilarious. I’ve touched on it before, in this article, but honestly the examples of how sexist the self-help space is just keep piling up.

Productivity advice is gendered, no matter how much the coachy bros pretend it’s not. Managing a life when your time is your own is very different from managing a life where you have 24 hours a day, seven day a week, 365 day a year responsibilities — such as motherhood. Maybe I should say parenthood, but… really?

I remember listening to a podcast where one of the married-with-kids coachy bros talked about his three hours of deep work from 5 am to 8 am, ‘before my 3 young kids start clamouring for my attention’.

Hmmm, I don’t know any woman with three young kids who gets to regularly sleep in ’til 8 am. My young kids were often up and very active between 5 and 8 am. And if they did sleep in, what an amazing chance to catch up with household chores without kids hanging off me while I did them. I suspect there is plenty of work (not the ‘deep’ kind) going on in this guy’s household before 8 am, but it’s his wife doing it. And why? To allow for his ‘deep work’.

Maybe he does his share later on in the day? But there are countless studies (like this one, and this one, and this one too) showing that this is statistically unlikely, even if he thinks it’s the case. (In one 2020 study, 72% of fathers insisted they were doing an equal share of household labour, but only 44% of mothers agreed.)

Even so, this guy probably understands a little more than some what the issues are with his “productivity advice”, even if it’s only from observing his wife.

So what about all the ‘productivity gurus’ who seem to be not only male and young, but also child-free. Do they not realise that their advice doesn’t work for anyone with actual responsibilities? Do they not see the flaws in their so-called productivity strategies?

Honestly, why do they need strategies to be productive at all? What’s stopping them? Netflix and social media it seems. But do we really need whole coaching packages to learn how to turn off Netflix? It literally involves pushing one button, dude.

When people have all the time in the world to be successful, nothing else draining their energy, and nothing more than fun activities to distract them, then that’s all well and good.

I don’t begrudge them their success, but I do object to them trying to ‘sell’ (via articles or coaching programs) the secret to that success. There are no secrets. There’s just a lot of time to get shit done.

The coachy bro secrets are, on the whole, just lies they’ve told themselves to make them feel like they’ve truly earned that success. They really believe they’ve worked harder than other people, or managed their time better, bless ‘em.

You’re not working harder than single moms, dude, or married moms. You’re not ‘carving out’ time to focus on your side hustle. You literally have 128 hours a week to work on that side hustle (assuming you spend 40 hours a week at your regular job). Because there are 168 hours in a week.

I once used a write-it-down tracking system (in the days before apps) to work out how I was spending my 168 hours a week. But guess what? My total consistently came out to higher than 168 hours.

I thought it was a math problem at first, but it was actually just a multi-tasking problem. The system asked me to add up things like hours spent on childcare, but also hours spent on household chores, cooking, eating, studying etc, which in my case (and that of almost every mom) overlapped all the time.

I suspect the tracking system was designed by a man.

In an aside, I also once colour coded my calendar. I used black ink for work things, blue for study related stuff, red for anything to do with the kids and other family obligations, and green for anything that was ‘just for me’. I gave the whole system up as too depressing the month I noticed there was only one thing in green on the entire calendar. And it was a dentist appointment.

It’s fine (I guess) for young, privileged child-free men to advise other men in the same boat. Just don’t try and advise those of us that have very different lives, okay?

Or if you do, have an answer for the moms who say: I’m up at 5 am, Chad, like you suggested. I usually am. I’m standing at the kitchen counter breast-feeding the baby while making breakfast for the toddler who’s climbing up my leg as we speak.

Now what?

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