urban dictionary the most reliable source defines life admin as one's personal day-to-day tours that
are of an administrative nature in her book life admin elizabeth evans defines it as the office
type work it takes to run a life and a household this is not a commercial for her book but if
you do want my book review and my personal book summary i'll be sending that out in my
newsletter on monday for this video though i was inspired after reading this book to set up my own
life admin day and i wanted to show you how you can organize your own as well and some of
the key lessons from this book so the first step to setting up a life admin day is to figure out
exactly the type of admin that you personally do one way to do this is by looking at your
current to-do list and making note of what sorts of tasks you have on there pay special attention
to tasks that have been on there for a long time like that package you've been meaning to take to
the post office for three weeks or that bag of clothes that you've been meaning to donate for
three months if your current to-do list is not really representative of your full plate of normal
life admin responsibilities you can take a look at your trigger list the trigger list if you're new
to this channel is what we use for brain dumping so it's basically a list of the different areas
of responsibility of your life the various kinds of tasks that you do if you want a bit more of an
explanation i talk about it in my weekly planning video i've also put together a little summary of
categories that were mentioned in the book as well as some that i thought of on my own so just feel
free to pause this screen take some notes i'll give you time okay so once you make a list of
all of your life admin that one time you can use it anytime you need a life admin day in the future
or you could set a recurring event on your calendar and just have that live admin day
happen automatically and then every time you take a look at your list and you just ask yourself
which of these items needs to be done the category i'm working on first is research because i think
that is my life admin weakness it's the stuff i'm most likely to put off because it's just so
nebulous and it gives me a headache because i don't know what i'm doing so i think the four
main annoying things that i have to research are accountants for my blog lawyers or other types of
people who can help me with working legally setting up a business or whatever in spain
this is what imposter syndrome is i think i feel like i'm on the phone like pretending to be an
adult pretending to be a business owner and i have to make sure that other people don't find
out that i'm just pretending uh travel insurance for getting to spain and then i was also thinking
about insurance for my equipment because i'm gonna be bringing over like my computer
camera other camera everything um and then i thought i should look at credit cards i
don't know i have a personal tracking account and a business checking account with a bank
here in madison and i also have a credit card with them which i got purely for the purposes of
building my credit but i barely use it so it might not even be helping with that i'm pretty sure i'm
gonna have to open an account with a spanish bank but then i also feel like i should get some other
kind of credit card because i'm pretty sure i get literally no benefits from the one that i
currently have something like cash back or travel miles or whatever those are points something
so according to elizabeth there are four different life admin personalities none of
which is objectively the best they all have their own specific strategies and we can learn something
and borrow something from each of them however i do think i would guess that in this audience we
probably have a disproportionate amount of super doers so i would encourage you to take a look at
the strategies of the other three personalities so the super doer they are on top of things
and feeling great about it they optimize and systemize things and they delicate and outsource
intentionally the admin denier is not doing their admin but they're feeling fine about it
out of sight out of mind they rebel against admin they try to escape from it
and they try to reduce their admin by simplifying their life overall hashtag minimalism hashtag
more with less the admin avoider on the other hand is not doing their admin but they feel
bad about it so they delay admin and they deflect it when it's handed to them like
do i have to do that and they tend to go with their gut rather than taking the time to research
their options finally the reluctant doer they get their admin done but they do not enjoy it at all
this personality tries to minimize their admin by choosing low admin activities and options in
the first place phase two of my life admin day was errands so first i got myself some coffee and
then i went and donated these bags of clothes that i've been meaning to donate for months
i finally got around to looking through them one final time and then packing them up into bags
i went to a store that sells second-hand books in order to sell them the books and the journals
that i didn't want anymore and i also returned a library book that i checked out pre-covet
so literally one and a half years ago i got six dollars and 20 cents for my books and journals
in other words i now have two dimes that are going to sit at the bottom of my wallet for
the rest of time because no one even uses coins anymore alrighty the last stop is the post office
so yeah the last thing that i needed to do was fill out a bunch of forms and
mail college documents to the wisconsin secretary of state it's honestly very confusing
there are also different styles of life admin and if you know your personal style you can make
doing admin more personally enjoyable so do you prefer using techy gadgets or old school paper
do you like making things pretty or do you like efficiency do you like to get things
out of the way right away or do you like to wait until you have a chance to complete something
right do it thoroughly do you prefer getting a lot done in one sitting or short sprints of work
time do you prefer doing life admin stuff with other people or by yourself so once you know
your personal style and how you like to work it's time to plan your life admin day one way that you
can organize this list is by grouping things based on the physical or mental context you could also
group them from most difficult to least so that the whole process gets easier and easier as you go
or you could try alternating difficult tasks with easy fun ones so that you get a little reward each
time you finish something difficult and finally the last stage of my life admin day was just a
bunch of little leftover computer tasks nothing that's too difficult nothing that takes too long
it's just it always gets pushed off the to-do list somehow okay so i had this fantastic idea
for sort of a going-away gift for my parents when i leave for spain there are these digital
photo frames you've probably seen them we've got one for my grandma when we visited her in 2019
but we got her one of those where you have to like plug in a usb or something and so we loaded it up
with photos and we gave it to her but it's not going to update with new photos until the next
time we visit lithuania because she for sure is not going to be able to figure out how to
take out the usb and download photos from the cloud or whatever so i thought for my
parents wouldn't it be fun if i got them a wi-fi digital photo frame i think there's like an app
where you can send photos to the photo frame with your phone and so while i'm installing
all the cool photos i take i can just send them to their photo frames and they'll wake up and
there's a photo frame on their bedside table and they can see what i'm up to i think it's a super
cute idea so they're pretty expensive i think on average they're probably like 150 because
the wi-fi is an expensive feature apparently but i think it's going to be very meaningful
and useful in the long term so i am splurging on my parents today one thing that helps to stay on
track is to plan out a rough schedule for the day so kind of using time blocks we talk a lot
about time blocks on the bliss bean but looking at your calendar and trying to figure out roughly
how long each category of life admin will take so that you know if you're staying on track and then
also deciding which of these tasks on your big long admin list are the least important so that
if you are running out of time what can you push off until the future and what has to get done
today at the end of your life admin day it's a good chance to reflect on how the whole thing went
how could you simplify the tasks that you did today in the future so that they can be more
efficient or completely unnecessary in the future so i hope you enjoyed watching this video it was a
very interesting experience for me i actually really enjoyed uh comparing credit cards and
having a call with an accountant it made me feel very grown up even though it was very confusing it
was also very satisfying to go and donate those closing books that had literally been sitting
in the hallway for months and that library book that i had for like a year and a half and that's
just what a life advent day does it takes that weight off your shoulders it makes you feel
refreshed so i hope this inspires you to do a life admin day of your own let me know in the
comments what your lingering tasks are what is it that you're not getting around to i already
admitted to having a library book for a year and a half so it is a safe space down there in the
comments feel free to admit to any embarrassing admin stories that you have be sure to give this
video a like and subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications and i will see you next week bye