My name is Roman Bednár. I studied industrial engineering in Žilina and earned my PhD in logistics and production management. Measuring work is what I do for a living — eleven years of building industrial software, five years developing tools that optimise production and administrative processes, and published papers on lean manufacturing. I worked with BasicMOST, a method that breaks a work operation down into individual motions and measures it in seconds. Today I manage product costs — knowing what things really cost is my job.
I never used any of it at home. Not until it was almost too late.
My wife and I were standing over the recycling bin, arguing about an uncrushed milk carton. Four months later, filed divorce papers were lying on the table. Not a threat thrown in an argument — an actual document.
That was when it hit me that emotions were not going to fix this, so I reached for the one thing I actually know. We stopped guessing and started measuring. We went through roughly 130 household activities and for each one we set how long it takes, how mentally demanding it is, how critical it is, and how easily someone else can take it over.
I was hoping it would prove me right. It didn't. It showed me in black and white that she does more. But at the same time it showed her, for the first time, my mental load — the deadlines, the insurance, the decisions I carried in my head so she wouldn't have to. We could finally both see the other picture. The divorce papers were withdrawn.
That is how Family Fair Play started. Not as a business — as a lifeline for my own family. It becoming a product came later.
I am not a psychologist or a couples therapist. I am an engineer who spent years measuring work on a factory floor and then found out that the hardest work in his own home had never been measured by anyone.