Life Admin. How To Tackle It Without Going Crazy!

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Life admin has always got the better of me. It has always felt soul-sucking. From school notices to bills, to appointments that need to be made, the whole lot makes me cringe. I often feel like I’m drowning in a sea of life admin.

I’ve always prided myself on being fairly organized, but this isn’t the case with the humdrum of everyday tasks.

Why?

1. I’m a terrible procrastinator. It’s embarrassing to admit. But it’s the truth. So I put it off and put it off a little more, and all of a sudden I have four phone calls to return, unsigned school trip forms and the rubbish hasn’t been put out.

2. It always seems to take forever to deal with mundane tasks, and I wind up feeling very resentful. I’d rather be out for a run with the dog than running errands!

Here are a few things I’ve implemented to help me tackle these annoying life admin tasks in a much more organized, efficient, and timely matter.

Become a frog eater

This is the best solution for us avid procrastinators.

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

Mark Twain

Loosely translated as “do the thing you don’t want to do, but actually need to do”. This might be the worst task of the day or the one you have no motivation for.

The idea behind this is that eating that frog will not only get it out of the way first, but it will set the tone for tackling the rest of the day.

Think about it, if you ate a (literal) frog at the start of your day you’d feel fairly invincible and ready to take on whatever the day throws at you!

For me, my frog often consists of anything remotely extroverted. If I have to make an actual call or run an errand that I know will involve talking to real people, there’s a good chance I’ll put it off until… er, tomorrow!

Figure out what your frogs usually are and make a plan of attack the night before.

Systematise and automate

In his book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, Daniel Levitin, discusses the impacts of the 34 gigabytes of information each of us processes every day.

“Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.”

We simply can’t efficiently process all the information that comes our way, let alone deal with it effectively.

This is why we need to implement automation and systems that can take over some of the jobs, so we can focus on others.

Think about automating some of the mundane, regular life admin tasks such as paying bills, creating automatic email templates, and scheduling regular appointments in advance.

If you can afford to pay for grocery delivery and a meal service like Hello Fresh (U.S.), or My Food Bag (New Zealand), I highly recommend it. We don’t currently use My Food Bag, but when I worked full time it was a lifesaver.

Let go of the idea that it has to be done perfectly

To be honest, much of the stress and angst I have dealing with life admin is because I want to do it all perfectly.

But because perfect usually takes longer than the time I have available I either don’t do it or feel unhappy for half-assing it.

Becoming more comfortable with just getting things done, rather than done perfectly, has been instrumental in my survival of motherhood. With little ones underfoot, there’s little to no chance of things staying clean or orderly for long so I relieve the pressure by taking the good-enough approach.

Kids only got one vegetable for dinner? Good enough. Nephews birthday present sent a week late? Good enough.

If you are looking for some great resources for tackling some of this life admin then here are a few I use;

  • Todoist for a centralized and electronic to-do list. I’ve only recently made the switch to a million tiny pieces of paper to this but I can already tell you – I’m never going back!
  • Observe the 1-minute rule. It’s super simple and goes like this. Anything that can be done in 1-minute or less, do it there and then. You might not like making the bed as soon as you get up but your 10 pm self will thank you!
  • Delegation! The mental load of life admin often falls to one person in the house. But generally, it’s too much for just one person. This isn’t always easy because it requires at least two extra things; communication skills, and trust!
  • Decluttering. I know, I beat on this drum regularly, but I’m not stopping anytime soon. If you are spending too much time organizing your stuff, the solution could be simple: own less stuff.

If you have any other tips and tricks for dealing with life admin reach out and I’ll include them below.

Let’s figure out how to sail the seas of ‘life admin’ together!