**How do we spend our time – and who decides?**

If we look at a typical day, one thing quickly becomes apparent: wage labour takes up the largest part. It is often considered the "real" life. Everything else that happens – caring for others, education, political engagement, time for oneself – has to fit into the gaps.

Sociologist Frigga Haug proposed a simple, almost radical model against this: our time should be evenly divided among four areas.

## // Four Hours, Four Areas

The idea: each person spends about four hours a day on each of these four areas.

**Wage labour.** Paid activity that secures one's livelihood.

**Reproductive labour (care work).** Caring for others and for oneself – childcare, caregiving, housework, everything that makes daily life possible in the first place.

**Community work.** Political engagement, solidary action, participation in social affairs.

**Personal development.** Education, culture, leisure, everything people do for themselves to grow.

## // Today's Imbalance

In reality, the division looks different, and it is anything but fair. Wage labour dominates. For many people, it consumes eight, nine, ten hours a day – plus travel time, plus mental presence after work.

Care work is hardly seen. It happens "alongside", often unpaid, often invisible. And it is unequally distributed: even today, women* do a significantly larger share than men.

Hardly any time remains for education, culture and political engagement. Those who end up exhausted on the sofa in the evening rarely have the energy for adult education classes, demonstrations or voluntary work.

This division is not a law of nature. It is the result of an economic system that makes wage labour the centre of life – and pushes everything else to the margins.

## // What the 4-in-1 Perspective Proposes

The model is more than a new timetable. It is a different understanding of what constitutes a good life in the first place.

No one should be worn down by wage labour. Care work should no longer be a private matter, but a collectively borne task. Education and political engagement should not be what is left over, but a natural part of life.

Linked to this is an abolition of the gendered division of labour. If all four areas are part of every life, care work can no longer be silently delegated to women*.

*Key reference: Frigga Haug, Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive. Politik von Frauen für eine neue Linke*

# /1 Hyphae & Care Mycelium

**There is more going on beneath the surface than we think.**

In forests, fungi form vast networks of fine threads. These threads are called *hyphae*; the mesh they form together is called *mycelium*. Some of these meshes extend for kilometres and are thousands of years old.

What these fungal networks do sounds like science fiction: they connect trees with each other, often even trees of different species. They transport nutrients from one tree to another. When a tree is sick, it sometimes receives support from healthy neighbours – through the mycelium.

## // What Fungi Show Us

Three characteristics make these networks remarkable.

They are **decentralised**. There is no central control, no boss, no hierarchy. Yet the whole thing works.

They are **resilient**. When one connection breaks, other hyphae compensate. There is no single critical point where everything collapses.

They are **adaptable**. The mycelium is constantly changing, forging new connections, letting old ones die, reacting to changing conditions.

Author Luise Meier has proposed in her book *Hyphen* to use this image for organising care work.

## // A Care Structure Based on the Mycelium Model

How is care organised today? It depends on few points: the family, the romantic couple relationship, closed communities. Anyone who falls out of these structures – through illness, separation, conflict, estrangement from family – is often left alone.

The mycelium model proposes something else: a network in which each person supports two others – and receives support from two others themselves. But not from the same people. The person who cares for you is not the person you care for.

This conscious asymmetry has two advantages:

It breaks the logic of exchange – "I give you something, so you owe me something". No one can keep score anymore, because the relationships do not mirror each other.

And it prevents care work – as often happens today – from sticking to a single person, usually a woman*.

## // Connection to the 4-in-1 Perspective

A fair division of time among the four areas – wage work, care, community, personal development – cannot be achieved by any single person alone. It requires viable networks that jointly organise and stabilise care work.

Just as fungal networks connect different trees and ecosystems, mycelial care networks could connect different neighbourhoods, social milieus and lifestyles. The city becomes a living mesh of non-symmetrical care relationships – resilient, adaptable, open to constant change.

*Key reference: Luise Meier, Hyphen, Matthes & Seitz (2024)*