Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
000: Welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks
926 Plays6 years ago
This episode provides an introduction to the Life Admin Life Hacks podcast, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently to save you time, your money and improve your household harmony.
This episode provides a definition of Life Admin including some data from a survey the podcast hosts, Mia and Dinah, conducted.
Mia and Dinah discuss their motivation to start this project: that as their lives have got more complex and technology has moved on their old systems are no longer meeting the demands of Life Admin for a modern family.
They're driven to use their expertise in user experience design and finance to develop a new Life Admin system, which can help save time, money, improve your peace of mind and provide more household harmony.
Tools and ResourcesThe Mental Load - You should have asked, Emma, 2017
SharePlease head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
Recommended
Transcript
Jeep Lease Offer Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
It's Jeep 4x4 season. Make your next adventure epic and hurry in now for great deals. Now we'll qualify for returning FCA lessees. Get a low mileage lease on the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4x2 for $3.69 a month for 24 months with $2,999 due with signing. Tax title license extra. No security deposit required. Call 1-888-925-JEEP for details. Requires dealer contribution at lease through Ally Financial. Current lease must end by 6-3-24. Extra charge for miles over $20,000. Residency restrictions apply. Take delivery by 5-31-23. Jeep as a registered trademark.
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast Mission
00:00:30
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Diana Roe Roberts, a commercial and finance executive. And I'm Mia Northrop, a user experience designer, researcher and writer. We're on a quest to make life admin more bearable.
00:00:54
Speaker
We want to minimise it, automate it, share it and delegate it because it takes up too much time and too much headspace. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. We all have these powerful tools and information at our disposal and we want to make them work for us.
Defining Life Admin Tasks
00:01:12
Speaker
Before we get started, let's clarify what we define as Life Admin.
00:01:17
Speaker
Well, for me, life admin is all of that stuff that needs to happen to make our lives work. You know, paying the bills, the banking, insurance, the kids and all their activities and schedules and the logistics of having a social life. I think I used to be able to manage it all with my Filofax and the Leverage folder and a bit of a wall calendar.
Evolution of Life Management Tools
00:01:40
Speaker
So I found my Filofax the other day in the back of a cupboard.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I was incredulous that my whole life fitted at one stage in this little B5 document. I had my contacts in there, I had business cards, my diary, I had my projects listed out, all sorts of lists. And now my life is scattered across my phone, my iPad, my laptop, filing cabinets, lever arch folders, wall calendars, it's, you know, exploded.
Survey Insights on Life Admin
00:02:09
Speaker
We conducted a survey to find out what all of our friends thought Life Admin was and the sorts of things they thought it included were financial tasks, comparing products and services and setting them up, paying bills, insurance, utilities, getting your dreaded tax return done, paying your car rego, organizing your banking and even maintaining things around the house. And it also extends to things like making medical and dental appointments for yourself and your family members, your kids.
00:02:39
Speaker
organizing digital photos, filing documents. I think that was the one of the most out of control aspects for people's lives when it came to administration. There's the whole family schedule management, the logistics of who needs to be where, where and all those extracurricular activities and organizing tradespeople for that home maintenance or things that are going on around the house.
Inspiration Behind the Podcast
00:03:01
Speaker
So Mia, let's talk about why we've decided to start this project, Life Admin, Life Hacks. What's really inspired you to think about it? The fact that our lives are quite different. We followed different trajectories. We went to high school together and we went off to uni and you were very determined about what you were going to do. You had a clear idea of what you wanted to do and had this amazing career and lived overseas and got married quite early, had two kids.
00:03:29
Speaker
I have done lots of part-time work and contracting and freelancing in the last couple of years, especially. And my life isn't especially complex. We don't have lots of responsibilities, but we had that weekend away, didn't we, where we realized we spend way too much time thinking and stressing about life admin.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah. I think we both, you know, in our friendship group, I think we're both considered to be quite organized, but it's really interesting that sort of now in our life, somehow things have just got a bit more out of control and less organized. So I think it's a really good time for us to just take stock. Yeah. And we also mentioned the fact that, you know, juggling the load with your partners and making it feel more equitable and a little less resentful will also be a very good thing.
Complexity of Modern Choices
00:04:17
Speaker
That would definitely be a good thing for me. I guess also as a user experience designer, I couldn't help but look at this as a design problem and think, okay, so are we using the wrong tools? Do we have the wrong resources? Are the processes not as efficient as they could be? Like where are those problems?
00:04:35
Speaker
How can we tweak this so that life admin isn't such a big deal? Well, I think I used to be completely on top of our life admin, even when we first got married. And I think it's particularly because I have that financial background, so I didn't feel frightened or wary of taxes and superannuation. But somehow as our life has just got more complicated with kids arriving and I think technology's also moved on. But my systems haven't really caught up with those changes.
Mental Load in Partnerships
00:05:03
Speaker
And life these days is truly more complicated because we have so much more choice than previous generations. So for example, in Australia, electricity and gas and telephone companies have all been privatized. And whereas our grandparents or previous generations would have had
00:05:19
Speaker
One bill to pay and one provider got out their little checkbook, sent it off in the post. We get to choose which provider. We get to choose which product from that provider. We get to choose how we pay, how frequently we pay. And we have more expenses. We have, you know, car parking permits to park out the front of our houses. We've got a gazillion different permission forms and health detail forms that we have to send off for our kids.
00:05:44
Speaker
got mobile phones and internet plans and streaming. And none of this existed a few generations ago. And all of this means more expenses, more bills, more forms, more emails, more letters.
Developing Efficient Life Admin Systems
00:05:55
Speaker
And you know, Mia, how you mentioned trying to make the load more equitable. I think I had kind of a light bulb moment when I saw that cartoon you should have asked
00:06:06
Speaker
It's by a French cartoonist, Emma, and she put some words around my frustrations. And I think it's the same argument I have with my husband over and over again. And she called it the mental load. But I guess one of the things that thinking about our life admin and the systems around it that's made me reflect on is that I've created systems and processes that I had designed for myself. And I've never really thought about how I'd better design the systems for a team of two.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's a nice way of putting it. A team of two. So perhaps you've partnered up with someone and you'd like to share the mental load of remembering and managing all the admin more equitably.
00:06:46
Speaker
Or perhaps your parents and your kids paperwork and craft and their digital photos have gotten out of control. Or perhaps you started to take on some of the admin for your parents or a family member who needs your support. We want this podcast to be able to help you save your time, your money, peace of mind, and perhaps introduce a bit more household harmony.
00:07:06
Speaker
And I guess I'm doing this selfishly because I really want to develop a new system and start afresh in a system that's designed for today's environment technology and so that my husband and I can actually share the load.
Podcast Plans and Audience Engagement
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think the idea is that we want to get on top of it once and for all and just have things humming along. So we want to develop a system that's going to be more efficient and deliver that peace of mind and that harmony.
00:07:31
Speaker
What we're going to do is address a life admin high of the week and a life admin low of the week. Yeah. And each episode will also address a topic in deep dive. So it might be into filing systems or how to handle digital photos. We'll also discuss the tools or a book or whatever resources we've been using or reading that are helping us establish this new and improved system.
00:07:54
Speaker
So that wraps up our introductory episode. If you'd like to join us on our life admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, life admin life hacks to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there.
00:08:14
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
Call to Action and Kroger's Fresh Delivery
00:08:15
Speaker
Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.
00:08:30
Speaker
At Kroger, we know the minute a tomato is picked, the fresh timer starts. The sooner we get our produce to you, the fresher it is. That's why we've shortened the time from harvest to home for our tasty tomatoes, strawberries, and salads. So no matter how you shop, you have more time with your fresh produce. Kroger, fresh for everyone.