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Invisible Labor: Why Habits Are Different for Women
Have you ever snapped at your family over something as small as an empty roll of toilet paper? It was never really about the toilet paper. It was about everything you were already carrying that no one else could see. In this episode, certified habits and identity coach Monica Packer joins me to talk about invisible labor: what it actually is, why it makes standard habit advice fail for women, and the first steps toward finally sharing the load.
Key Takeaways
- Recognize that invisible labor is two thirds mental and emotional, not just physical tasks
- Understand why women unintentionally keep their own invisible labor hidden, even from themselves
- Start small by naming and valuing what you already carry before trying to change anything
- Bring one specific task into a family conversation instead of trying to redistribute everything at once
- Apply the same awareness to your workplace, not just your household
Why Habits Fail Women First
Most habit advice was never built with women’s lives in mind. It assumes a level playing field, one where everyone starts the day with the same mental bandwidth. Monica’s research tells a different story. Invisible labor, the constant behind the scenes work of noticing, planning, and remembering, makes up roughly two thirds of the total load women carry. It happens before a single task is ever visible to anyone else.
That’s why willpower was never really the problem. If your mental load is already full before you even open your planner, no habit system built for someone with a clear head is going to stick.
The Three Parts of Invisible Labor
Monica breaks invisible labor into three stages: conceiving of what needs to happen, planning how it will happen, and executing the task itself. Most conversations about fairness at home focus only on execution, who actually does the dishes or drives to practice. But the conceiving and planning stages are where the real weight lives, and they’re almost entirely invisible to everyone except the person doing them.
This mirrors research from Eve Rodsky, author of Fair Play, whose work has helped popularize the idea that household labor isn’t just about who does more, it’s about who holds the mental responsibility for making sure it gets done at all.
Why We Hide Our Own Labor
One of the most surprising parts of the conversation is how often women keep their own invisible labor hidden, even from themselves. When you’ve always been the one who remembers, it stops feeling like labor and starts feeling like personality. Monica encourages starting with a simple practice: naming what you carry, whether through journaling or a tool like the Fair Play card deck, before trying to change anything at all.
Where to Start
Monica’s advice for making real change is refreshingly small. Instead of overhauling your entire household system, pick one task, bring it into a real conversation, and give it a clear owner. Progress compounds. She points back to Iceland’s 1975 women’s strike as proof that even a single day of made visible labor can shift how a system sees itself.
This same principle applies at work. Publicly acknowledging invisible labor, compensating it fairly, rotating undesirable tasks, and including everyone from executives to janitorial staff in that conversation, can create the same kind of shift in a workplace that it can in a home.
About the Guest
Monica Packer is a certified habits and identity coach and the host of the top rated podcast About Progress, where she has helped thousands of women choose progress over perfection. On September 8th, she becomes a published author with the release of Sticky Habits: A Woman’s Guide to Reclaim Happiness, Ditch Perfectionism, and Create Habits that Last, already earning advance praise from Eve Rodsky and KC Davis. In the book, Monica lays out the Sticky Habit Method, a flexible, research backed approach built specifically for the realities of women’s lives.
Episode Links + Resources
- Pre-order Sticky Habits: abouttimepodcast.com/sticky
- Monica’s podcast, About Progress
- Follow Monica on YouTube and Instagram
- Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
- Apply for a free time management coaching session: freetimecall.com
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