Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
085: Life admin categories
3k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Mia and Dinah talk about what life admin is and is not, and describe the different categories of life admin, so that you can approach it in a more systematic way.
Mia and Dinah share their definition of life admin and explain that it is not housework or parenting but it often overlaps. Life admin is the third piece of the domestic labour puzzle and includes the scheduling, booking, shopping, paperwork, and planning that often facilitates housework and parenting tasks, but also has its own areas of responsibility.
For the full shownotes, head to Life Admin Life Hacks.
Subscribe to our Momentum newsletter
Follow the latest tips and hacks on:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:01
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.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Daenerys Roberts, an operations manager who loves using frameworks and categories to help me get my head around things.
Understanding Life Admin
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who thinks there are two types of people, people who like lists and categories, or people who live in chaos. In this episode, we'll outline the categories of life admin so you can get your head around what it is.
Sponsorship Mention
00:00:33
Speaker
This episode is brought to you by the Hour of Power Weekly Workroom. Come and do your Hour of Power with us in a virtual co-working space where you can focus on your to-do list and get stuff done.
00:00:44
Speaker
This might be the productivity and accountability hack you need to build a habit of addressing your life admin.
What is Life Admin?
00:00:51
Speaker
Head to lifeadminlifehacks.com to learn more and register for upcoming sessions. So in this episode, we're going to talk about a way to define life admin and put some boundaries around it. We'll also talk about the understanding of the payoff to a more methodical approach and some of the game changing tools that will help you tackle life admin more efficiently.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, so there are several reasons why life admin is out of control for so many of us. And firstly, for most people, it's because life admin is this blurry blob of tasks. There's no categories, there's no boundaries defining what it actually is. And without that, you can't really approach it in a methodical, repeatable, sustainable way.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, so before we dig into the categories, let's just clarify what we mean by life admin. We define life admin as the personal and our household administrative tasks and chores. So it's not housework, it's not parenting, but it often overlaps. Yeah. So when you have this sort of mental model, this framework of the different types of categories,
00:01:56
Speaker
and the types of the tasks, you're going to be able to approach it more systematically.
The Modern Complexity of Life Admin
00:02:00
Speaker
So take cooking and cleaning and laundry out of the picture. That is not life admin. The key is in the word admin. It's about the paperwork. It's the homework of adult life. It's not parenting. It's not something to do with child rearing and that sort of support. It's that third piece.
00:02:17
Speaker
of the domestic labor puzzle. So this is the scheduling, it's the booking, it's the shopping, it's the paperwork, it's the planning. And it often facilitates housework and parenting, but it's really its own beast. It has its own area of responsibility. Yeah, so there is definitely a lot of life admin that sits behind housework and domestic chores and parenting, but it's not the actual doing of the housework or the doing of the parenting, but it does include all of the admin related tasks that you need to do to facilitate those tasks.
00:02:47
Speaker
And one of the challenges is that life admin is often mushed with housework and parenting, which makes it hidden. And it's actually the burden that generates a significant portion of the mental load. So when people talk about the mental load and all the thinking and planning and the waking up in the middle of the night,
00:03:06
Speaker
Often that's to do with life admin. It's often not to do with the housework. It can be to do with parenting, depending on what's going on with the kids. But that mental load is often around the admin side of life. And it's because it might not be discussed in your household or you haven't got a framework to think about it or approach it in a sustainable way that makes it so stressful. So we're going to talk about the categories so that you can get your head around it.
00:03:34
Speaker
And you can start looking at it in an approachable way. And I think it is also worth talking about why life admin can get so out of control for people. One of the things that is worth talking about is how much more complicated life admin has got over recent years in terms of, you know, there's more choice, more products to choose from, more regulations, more permits and more forms to fill in.
00:03:59
Speaker
more services. 20 years ago, no one had streaming services. They didn't have to choose between Netflix and Binge or Spotify and Apple Music, all of those things. And just the lower cost to communicate is a huge one. You just can get bombarded with emails and SMSs and WhatsApps and everything, everyone vying for your attention and asking you to fill in more and more forms.
00:04:21
Speaker
If you thought it was just you, it's not. Modern life really is more complicated. And we are dealing with so much more admin as adults than our parents and grandparents did when they came into
Life Events and Admin Challenges
00:04:33
Speaker
adulthood. And we just, you know, one of our recent newsletters, we were talking about what admin was like for us in our twenties. And I can't believe where we've come from, Diane. We're talking about the fact that we use Filovaxes, that initially when we started paid work, we'd get
00:04:50
Speaker
like actual cash money in a little envelope that was given to you. You remember that? I do. You know, we had very basic tax returns. You used to get a physical tax pack, a big paper form and you'd fill it out. It was so much simpler. And now, you know, just thinking about the number of working with children, check licenses and all the hundred points of ID and all the services, as you said, and all of the ways people are trying to communicate. We are, it is a different scenario. It's no wonder it's out of control.
00:05:19
Speaker
And the reality is the amount and complexity of life admin increases usually just at the time when you've got the least time to deal with it. So having children, just a huge explosion of life admin. And as your parents age and you might be supporting them or having other caring responsibilities, you know, more life admins thrown your way just at a time when
00:05:39
Speaker
your parenting load and your caring load really kicks up a notch. So no wonder people feel so overwhelmed. Yeah. And then there's that life admin does not get better with age. It's more complicated. And then there's life admin triggering events. So, you know, getting that first job, buying a house, getting married, having a baby, as these life events happen, they have their own life admin surrounding them as well.
Managing Overwhelm with Systems
00:06:04
Speaker
You know, research, you know, a little while ago now, we calculated that Australians, average Australian, has about 500 life admin tasks each year. I mean, if you have kids, you probably have about 33% more life admin tasks than those that don't. And we found that about one in three are doing life admin tasks for a parent or an adult relative. So there's a lot going on. It's really useful to be able to think about this
00:06:31
Speaker
in a systematic way, which is basically how this whole juggernaut started. And I do think it's worth also calling out that a lot of people have really unhelpful beliefs when it comes to life admin and they just think, oh, actually, I'm just not motivated or I'm not disciplined or I don't have enough willpower. And I guess another huge one is
00:06:53
Speaker
People think they just need more time. And if only I had more time, things would get done. But at the same time, most people think they can do this life admin in magic time because they don't actually have a dedicated time to do the life admin. Our survey showed only 5% actually have a dedicated slot to do life admin. So no wonder people aren't getting on top of things when they haven't got time slot to get it done.
Categories of Life Admin
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that we know listeners of the podcast and people who grab our book, they're either
00:07:28
Speaker
really into self-improvement and personal development, and they like to optimize all aspects of their life, or they feel like they are legitimately disorganized and they're looking for solutions. And there can be a lot of limiting beliefs around, I'm just never going to hit my act together. I'm just always disorganized. It's always going to be that way. And we're here to tell you that these are skills that can be learned. There are tools that are going to do so much of the heavy lifting for you.
00:07:55
Speaker
And when you have a system and a process, you can follow and learn and make your own. It makes the world of difference as does just having a little hour of power in your week. We'll get into that to do this stuff. Yeah. And I mean, the reality is if you don't get this stuff under control, then you do waste time. You spend more time on these tasks than you actually need to. You waste money because.
00:08:20
Speaker
You're not doing comparison shopping, your policies and plans are out of date. You're stressed. You're anxious. You know, you're having those 3am wakeups that you haven't filled in that excursion permission slip or, you know, those sorts of things. You're worried about what you're forgetting. You've got this monkey mind. And finally, I guess big thing that was in my household, lots of tension and frustration between your partner and other family members and this feeling of unfair responsibilities is a huge one.
00:08:47
Speaker
This is definitely an area that you want to be talking about explicitly with whoever you live with, that you want to plan for it. You want to educate yourself about it and you want to set up systems to tackle it because the costs can be high. Like, you know, whether it's burnout, there's just, you know, levels of anxiety and stress, whether it's impacting your relationship, whether it's impacting your participation in paid work. Like we know people will take leave or they'll scale back.
00:09:15
Speaker
their workforce participation, or they'll hesitate to step up into job roles with more responsibility because life admin just feels too big to juggle alongside everything else. So we're here to tell you there is a solution and it starts with getting your group on these categories, gonna define it so you can refine your approach to it. So what we wanted to do is start with thinking about their two types of life admin.
00:09:45
Speaker
There's everyday life admin. So this is life admin that occurs cyclically or seasonally. It might be every day or every week or every month or once a year, for example. So things like meal planning, which might happen every week, maybe comparison shopping for your bills that come up for renewal every year, planning birthday parties, those sorts of things, they happen ongoing and they'll never go away.
00:10:12
Speaker
And then there are occasional life events that trigger life admin. So this is when you're changing jobs or you're moving house or you're buying a house or you decide to get married or you have a baby. These are obviously major things that happen in your life that happen on top of the everyday life admin. And we want to motivate you to get your everyday life admin under control because it makes addressing these life events
00:10:38
Speaker
way less overwhelming. So if your everyday life admin is humming, then you can deal with these major life events because you've got the systems and processes in place.
Streamlining Household and Personal Affairs
00:10:48
Speaker
And some life events have a lasting impact on your life admin. So for example, if you have a baby, yes, there's all the life admin and paperwork about actually going through a pregnancy and having a baby, but then guess what? You've got a kid for 18 years and you know, they have all their own life admin
00:11:07
Speaker
forms, social life, stuff that needs to happen to get them moving through the world. So they can have this, it just levels up. The same thing with you have a house, depending on what kind of house, it might have more home maintenance tasks surrounding it. Or suddenly you have a gas bill, which you didn't, you know, you didn't have gas before. So it can require more tasks to support it.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. So those are the kind of two types of life admin. And then I guess we come to the four categories of life admin. So it's really about thinking about putting these, your life admin into each of these categories that encompass various types of tasks. And one of the reasons we encourage you to do this, it really does help you to figure out where you want to focus your efforts because different categories have a different payoff. So the first category is streamlined household. So these are like,
00:11:57
Speaker
Life had been tasks that are related to the smooth running of your household. So think.
00:12:02
Speaker
meal planning and grocery shopping, think all of the kid related admin, think about decluttering, you know, particularly around clothes and those sorts of things that keep happening every year, year in and year out, and think about outsourcing. And this category of life admin, really the payoff is generally, if you can get it under control is being, and do it more efficiently is going to save lots of time. Yeah. And our book life admin hacks is structured around these categories. So this is one of the first things you look at.
00:12:31
Speaker
so that you get your household humming and streamlined and that gives you the time back to look at other things. Unless you know what's for dinner every night at five o'clock and you're not stressing about that and you're moving around a decluttered house that feels spacious and giving you that energy instead of freaking you out every time you open a cupboard and wonder where all the clean surfaces went. Unless all that's sorted out, it's hard to move on to the other areas.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, so then the second category is thinking about having organised personal affairs. So in this category, we've got things like getting your tax under control, your superannuation or your pension fund, those kind of retirement savings, thinking about your health and making sure that you've
00:13:13
Speaker
got your regular health checks and things under control. And finally, I think a big one for many of our listeners that people think about more than they ever, you know, the amount of time we're actually taken to do is having a will sorted. And generally this category, the payoff to getting it sorted is peace of mind. Like it really means you can stop some of that 3am wake-ups about worrying about your financial situation or that you got a tax return you haven't filled for, you know, three years, those sorts of things. Okay.
00:13:42
Speaker
The third category is around competitive products and plans. So this is where the comparison shopping comes into things like your loans might be your mortgage or a car loan, your insurances as in car insurance, home and contents insurance, energy such as electricity and gas, your internet, your mobile phones, your credit cards. So usually for these products and plans, you'll be on some kind of policy or premium
00:14:08
Speaker
or a plan that expires every goddamn year. And you'll get some letter or an email saying, you know, the rate is changing or the premium's going up and that is your trigger to do something and the doing something is shopping around for a better deal.
00:14:23
Speaker
So this category, the payoff is about saving money.
Comparison Shopping for Savings
00:14:28
Speaker
And the idea is that you're going to set up some systems and processes that lets you do that shopping around seamlessly instead of it being a major production and taking, you know, two weeks of researching the whole Internet to find a better deal. So this third one is all about competitive products and plants. And the final category is actually about having fun.
00:14:49
Speaker
And sadly, even a social life requires some degree of life admin. So think about things like planning your social life and holidays, but also gift giving and planning for Christmas, major holidays, those sorts of things. Really, if you can optimize your approach to these things, it means that you can easily fit more of the things in that you enjoy.
00:15:12
Speaker
without spending so much time and money on organizing it. So really getting that under control really can make sure that you're spending more time doing what you'd like to do. Yeah. And the payoff for that fourth category, that sort of social life and fun category is a mixture of saving time and having peace
Social Life Optimization
00:15:29
Speaker
of mind.
00:15:29
Speaker
and saving money, but also nurturing that household harmony. It's when you get to have a good time and not feel resentful that you're doing all the work and the labor to make a good time for your family or your partner. So they're the four categories, streamlining your household, organizing your personal affairs, getting competitive products and plans, and sustaining your social life. So if you hear about these categories, you might be thinking, okay, if I think about my everyday life admin,
00:15:59
Speaker
Where is most of it sitting right now? Where do I need to focus? What's stressing me out? What's neglected? You know, what's a priority for you? Do you need to be saving more time in your life? Do you need to be saving more money?
Prioritizing Life Admin Tasks
00:16:11
Speaker
Or do you rather have peace of mind that can give you a steer to know where you might want to focus your attentions first or for the moment. OK, so we've talked about the types and the four categories.
00:16:23
Speaker
Another really important thing to think about, particularly when you're trying to actually get these things done, is to think about how much time some of these life admin tasks can take.
Task Size and Management
00:16:33
Speaker
So we really like to divide life admin tasks into three sizes. So the first size is a two minutes, two easy tasks.
00:16:42
Speaker
That's something that really, it's like take that Nike just do it approach when it, you know, that email lands and it's a bill and if you can pay it straight away, just do it, get it done and don't leave it for later. Read that email, quickly process that task and get it done so you'll never have to think about it again.
00:16:59
Speaker
The second size is the 10 minute time killer size. So this is that medium size task. It's going to take about 10 minutes and you want to make sure there's time in your week, in your day where you can get to these tasks. Often it'll be something like filling in a big form or doing an online shop for something where you're going to, you know, have a look at a couple of options and then make a purchase. It's that medium size kind of task.
00:17:27
Speaker
And we call it 10 minute time killer because often it can be done in the kind of dead time when you're waiting for other things to happen.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that, you know, being able to do that when a meeting finishes early or if you're sitting in the car waiting for, you know, a child at pickup, being able to knock off those tasks, it makes a huge difference. And I think the tendency is for people to use those 10 minute time slots at dead time just to scroll on social media. And the reality is if you can use that time to knock off one of those tasks, it actually will give you a much bigger dopamine hit than you'll ever get from a bit of the Instagram.
00:18:01
Speaker
The third size is the hour of power. And this, as it sounds like, is a 60 minute slot where you sit down and you do some of those chunkier life admin tasks. So this might be where you're planning a birthday party or you're looking at electricity providers and deciding to switch. This is a recurring slot in your calendar. You're going to make a decision that
00:18:23
Speaker
On a certain day, at a certain time, you are going to have your hour of power. And this addresses that, you know, the situation that people often find themselves in where they think, you know, I don't have enough time to do life admin or I spend too much time on it, but they don't actually have a dedicated slot in their schedule to do it. When you have this slot in your schedule, it brings instant peace of mind because you know when you're going to be able to address this life admin.
00:18:47
Speaker
You often find that either things don't take as long as you need, or at least you have this recurring slot that you can go to if things are taking multiple sessions to get at. You don't have to think about, when am I going to get to this? You know, when you're going to get to it, it's going to be during your hour of power. So whenever a task appears on your radar, you're going to size it and you're going to name it. Is this a two minutes too easy? Is this a 10 minute time killer or is this an hour of power task?
00:19:14
Speaker
And I think really putting that around it helps you figure out how big tasks are and actually when you're going to
Key Tools for Life Admin
00:19:20
Speaker
get them done. Yeah. So we've talked about now the categories. Let's talk about some of the tools that can actually really help you get on top of your life admin. We talk about having five foundational tools that will actually make the biggest difference to setting up a streamlined life admin system. And so the first one is really
00:19:38
Speaker
having a digital calendar that is your source of truth of everything that's going on in your household. And if you have a partner, making sure that that's shared with your partner so that everyone has that single place of source of truth.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah, so many people have situations where there might be a calendar on the wall, they've got calendar items on their phone, on a computer, their partner might have some calendar events in their phone and computer, and there is no one place where you can just say, what are all our commitments as a family? Are we all operating off the same assumptions? And I know there were situations in the past where someone would say, oh, can you come, because you were going to your movie Tuesday night, and I'd be like,
00:20:20
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know. I don't know what we got on Tuesday. And I had no way of actually looking at a definitive source. So a digital calendar lets you have that shared understanding across the family. The fact that it's digital means it's always with you. You can take it anywhere. You can access it anywhere. And I think the other key aspect of that is that
00:20:39
Speaker
You don't just put in the events that happen. You need to put in some of those recurring activities that help your household hum along. So understanding when is grocery shopping happening for us? When do we know the fridge is going to be full so we don't run out and there's nothing for lunch boxes? When is laundry happening so that again, we don't run out and someone's got to wear something atrocious because things weren't clean. So we call those the inevitable activities.
00:21:07
Speaker
they can be baked into your calendar along with the aspirational activities of the good stuff that needs to happen every week to nurture your wellbeing. Whether that's your exercise that you want to do, it's the fun commitments you have in the week, all of that belongs in a digital calendar. Calendar makes a huge difference. The second tool that I think for me transformed my life and for some time after getting it
00:21:31
Speaker
I couldn't stop talking about it was having a password manager. And what we're talking about is not actually what's in your browser or in your phone to save things. We're actually talking about a paid password manager that makes it much easier to seamlessly take your passwords from device to device, from browser to browser.
00:21:49
Speaker
And more importantly, to share it with others in your life who need to have access to those passwords for them to be able to deal with life admin tasks. So huge game changer in terms of sharing the load.
00:22:01
Speaker
in terms of being able to easily share logins for various platforms and those sorts of things. And we also recommend using a password manager to save like your secure documents. So things like, you know, your passport, driver's license, et cetera. So you've got those things at the ready and also for including frequent form filling data. So you can use your password manager to make form filling a breeze by keeping all of your regular information in there.
00:22:29
Speaker
So you can really make form filling a 10 minute time killer task or even in some cases, a two minute too easy task because all of the information you need to fill forms is ready at hand. Yeah, password managers, one of those things where we did not realise how the impact was going to have and how beneficial it was and how appreciative we were going to be. Because we'd always just had, you know, we might be using the Chrome password manager and I was sort of half working and then
00:22:59
Speaker
I don't know if you're on Apple things and the key chain is saving you, kind of thinking, oh, there's some password management happening. Moving to a paid password manager where it's got the one set of passwords across all of your devices and is, you know, auto logging you in, auto filling in forms is miraculous. We have separate episodes dedicated to that. So if you are new to password managers, have a list and we'll link to it in the show notes.
00:23:24
Speaker
The third tool is really having a dedicated storage spot for all of your life admin documents, but also, controversially sometimes, a dedicated life admin email address. So what we're saying here is have a cloud storage, so a Google Drive, a OneDrive, a Dropbox.
00:23:43
Speaker
where you've got an organized folder structure so it's easy for you to keep all of your documents and be able to access them on whatever device you're on. But also to set up a dedicated life admin email address so that you can really separate your life admin from your work email and your fun personal email.
00:24:01
Speaker
and really put that life admin into neutral territory. So if you've got a partner, share that life admin email address with them so that you can both be actioning the life admin tasks. Yeah. And this is essential to sort of going paperless. So if you have still folders and drawers full of warranties and receipts and statements and whatnot, and it's all a bit out of control, having a cloud storage such as Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive,
00:24:28
Speaker
where you can start to scan some of those important documents and put them there to access and share and refer to is going to help you go paperless. It's going to reduce paper clutter from your home and it's going to make those documents way more accessible and shareable.
00:24:43
Speaker
The email address is one that you're going to give to organizations. You're going to give it to all your providers. You're going to give it to the school, the extracurricular stuff that the kids do, all of the stuff that you don't want cluttering up your personal email. And what's beautiful about having it in a separate spot is you can decide, you know, I'm going to sit down for my hour of power once a week, open up that email, see what's come through.
00:25:05
Speaker
and start to execute on some of that stuff. You don't have to be half ignoring it as it's slipping in between your various other newsletters and sales emails or whatever else. It's a bit more fun. It's parked elsewhere if you should deal with it at a specific time. Going paperless, when we did this, and again, we have a specific episode dedicated to this, this is another sort of game-changing moment when you
00:25:31
Speaker
go through all the paper in your home and you shred it or you recycle it and you just feel liberated from it. And then you've got these emails coming through parked off to the side, your dedicated life admin email address.
00:25:44
Speaker
It's really one of those things that shifts the dial incredibly in terms of feeling on top of Life Admin. And I'd like to just mention, we've got a little instant filing system. If you like, I have no idea to set up my folders. Jump onto our website, lifeadminlifehacks.com, go to the resources section, and there's a little instant filing system. We've set up some folder templates. You'll literally download it. You can drag it into Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, and it will magically populate it with
00:26:14
Speaker
a bunch of folders and some folders for all your life admin files and documents and you can customize it to what makes sense to you. Awesome. Okay. Fourth tool, the secret to successful adult years. Lists. Lists. So I think that when we started this caper, we had lists. We're both list lovers, but we didn't have structure around our lists.
00:26:35
Speaker
you know, post it notes and things on our phone and et cetera. So really thinking about dividing your list into three types and having a digital tool again, that you have as your single source of truth and that you can share with other people who you're sharing life admin tasks with. So we divide our lists into three types. The first to do list, which are the actual things you need to do.
00:26:58
Speaker
They are time bound. They have verbs in them. Yes. They usually have a strict deadline, so they need to be done by a certain time. Those should go on a dedicated to-do list. Yeah. I actually have one to-do list that's literally called 10-Minute Time Killers, and the other to-do list is called Hour of Power. So I know these are the medium-sized to-dos and these are the big to-dos.
00:27:22
Speaker
Second type of list are checklists. So checklists help you do recurring items more efficiently. So I've got checklists in my phone for a checking list for packing to go on holiday and another one to do with leaving the house to go on holiday. So those are kind of different. And those are checklists that you can use again and again, because those are tasks that you do again and again. But it might also be like things to pack when you go to swimming lessons so that
00:27:49
Speaker
if a different parent is taking a child, it's really easy for them to not forget the goggles or the flippers that need to go to swimming lessons. Yeah. And then the third type of lists are reference lists. And these types of lists are where you park ideas, sources of information for things, things that aren't urgent, there's no deadline associated, but they're just things you don't want to forget. So this is where you might put all those books and movies and podcasts you want to listen to.
00:28:17
Speaker
You need to write it down somewhere. May someone's made a suggestion, you know, I'll put that on my list. It might be gift wish lists for your family. So, and for yourself, if you've got things that you'd like to be receiving for presents or that, you know, for the kids, you're just noting things across the year, you can create gift wish lists for each of them. And these are, it's essential to sort of, when you're putting an item down, think, okay, does this belong on a to-do list?
00:28:42
Speaker
or a checklist or a reference list. And then you can use like the notes or the reminders app on your phone to store these lists. And again, you'll have them with you everywhere. You can consult with them depending on what kind of phone you have. You can ask Siri or Google assistant or Alexa or Contino, whatever. And the IA pops up in the future. You can talk to them and get them to add things to these lists.
00:29:06
Speaker
as you're doing other stuff. And the final foundational tool is really about budgeting. And it's not so much, we're not advocating a particular way of budgeting, but it's really understanding your financial situation. So you know what you can afford and where you need to focus your efforts in terms of saving money. So there's lots of different ways of budgeting out there, but really having a handle on your financial situation and a system to keep that on track.
00:29:34
Speaker
is really important in terms of understanding and having a stress-free life. Yeah. So when it comes to money management, you might use your, you know, your online banking. You might have some great tools that give you insights into where your spending is happening. You just want one of those pie charts that's showing all the different categories of where your money's going. Or you might like to equip yourself with some of those money management apps.
00:29:58
Speaker
where again, you can see your expenses and you can work out where you need to cut back spending.
Summary and Encouragement
00:30:04
Speaker
And understanding what's happening with your money informs where to focus for comparison shopping. So if you can see you're spending lots of money on electricity or home and contents insurance or whatever it might be, you're going to have that intel to know, oh, we need to do something about those bills. It also informs whether you can outsource more, whether there might be some cash you can spend to get help on various things around the house.
00:30:27
Speaker
Awesome. So Mia, we've talked about the two types of life admin. So everyday life admin and life event, triggering events, life admin. We've talked about the three sizes. Yep. We've got your two minutes too easy. Just do it now. Don't think about it. You've got your 10 minute time killer and your hour of power. And you've got your four categories of life admin. So the household affairs, really focused on saving time on those tasks.
00:30:57
Speaker
got organised personal affairs to really help you with making sure you've got peace of mind. You've got comparison shopping for products and plans focused on helping you save money. And finally, social life, making sure that you're having more fun and really improving your household harmony. Yep. And then finally, we've got the five foundational tools, your digital calendar, your password manager,
00:31:22
Speaker
your cloud storage and dedicated Life Admin email address, your lists and your budget. So hopefully putting those categories around Life Admin will help you better understand where you should be focusing your efforts given your season of life and what's important to you. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan,
00:31:49
Speaker
Please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.