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063: The 5 myths of life admin
701 Plays2 years ago
There are challenges to life admin but they’re not what you think they are. In this episode, Mia and Dinah dispel the most common myths they hear that people tell themselves when it comes to life admin.
We’ve been talking to people about their life admin for the last 4 years: one-on-one with friends and coaching clients, in corporate presentations that we give, and when we’re running workshops with groups. We hear the same myths mentioned again and again when it comes to streamlining life admin.
- It just takes willpower
- Willpower is about self-control, emotional regulation, being mindful to respond rather than react and make intentional choices
- Research has shown that willpower is finite, that it is depleted by self-control tasks during the day. So if you’ve had a day where you’ve had to exercise willpower to avoid certain things or to do certain things, then by evening you’re more likely to succumb to things you want to avoid.
- If you’re relying on willpower to get on top of life admin then doing anything in the evening is likely not going to happen as your willpower is too depleted. Mia and Dinah recommend:
- scheduling your Hour of Power for the morning or lunchtime
- making your important decisions during high-willpower moments.
- However, willpower is only required when a task or decision is hard. As you build your life admin skills and set up your environment to make things easier, then you won’t need to draw on willpower. The tasks won’t demand you to control your emotions and you won't feel that you're forcing yourself to do something unpleasant.
- It just takes more motivation
- Motivation is a reason for acting or behaving in a particular way.
- Mia and Dinah discuss the benefits of linking the time dedicated to life admin to your goals and values, so you can see the bigger picture. You need to reflect and ask yourself what it's costing you not to have this sorted and anchor the activities to what is important to you.
- They also discuss how they based each chapter of their book to support behaviour change based on the habit model from BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits - Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Trigger (B = M x T)
- If you maximise your ability to do life admin, and are aware of the relevant triggers for certain life admin tasks, then you don't need to draw on a huge amount of motivation to get it done. Focus more on mastering skills and you won't have to summons motivation to do life admin tasks.
- I know how to do it well
- Most people overestimate their ability with respect to life admin. However, if you ask people when is the best time to do certain life admin tasks or the steps involved or the criteria you should focus on, they struggle to respond.
- Investing time in learning shortcuts, decision making criteria, better apps, better websites to consult, means you increase your ability and it's easier to make behaviour changes when it feels easy.
- I just need more time
- Pandemic lockdowns taught us that even given more spare time due to no commutes, no social lives, no extracurricular activities, not everyone tied up all the loose ends in their lives.
- Most people try to do life admin in an ad hoc way with no dedicated time slot
- You need to ruthlessly prioritise, delegate, share, and outsource and schedule a regular Hour of Power to make the time for tasks that require you to concentrate. This means you have less admin to do, are focused on valuable life admin tasks, and have a dedicate time slot to do it within where you
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Transcript
Energy-Saving Tips from Georgia Power
00:00:00
Speaker
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Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks Podcast
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, an operations manager and for years I used the myth of not having enough time as an excuse not to tackle life admin tasks. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who finds it's when you finally face up to inconvenient truths
00:00:59
Speaker
that you see real shifts for the better in your life. In this episode, we will dispel the most common myths people tell themselves when it comes to life admin.
Gratitude for Audience Support
00:01:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. We're thrilled to be back with another episode and we want to put a shout out and thank our latest reviewers for the podcast and also for the book. Yeah, so this one comes from Lisa Ann on Goodreads who said, this is a great resource to pick up and choose what works for you and your family. 2022 is looking a whole lot better.
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, we're thrilled, Lisa Ann, that you're finding the resources and advice is working for you. And we want to welcome new people to the show. If you've recently joined us after hearing us when we've been out and about with the book, then welcome.
00:01:46
Speaker
We hope you dig back through the archives and find the episodes that are going to shift the game for you this year. And if you're loving the show, please make sure you leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. And also if you love the book, make sure you leave a review in Goodreads or wherever you bought the book. All right. So.
Debunking Life Admin Myths
00:02:04
Speaker
We've been talking to people about their life admin for four years now. And, you know, one-on-one with friends in the corporate presentations that we give when we're running workshops with groups. And we hear the same myths mentioned again and again when it comes to why streamlining life admin is difficult. And there are challenges. Like we know there are challenges. That's why we wrote the book.
00:02:25
Speaker
but they're really not what you think they are. So we thought it was worth bringing these to the light and spending some time exploring them so you can have a think about, you know, some of the excuses you might have been harboring or the unhelpful beliefs you've been hanging on to. We want to challenge some of those today and convince you that this can be streamlined. You can focus on a certain process and setting up your environment in a certain way and adopting certain habits.
00:02:55
Speaker
once you get your head around these particular myths. And I think we were even telling ourselves some of these myths four years ago, Mia. So I think we've dispelled them for ourselves. So great to be able to, I guess, share the wisdom that we've gained over the last four years. OK, so let's get into the first myth.
Myth 1: Willpower is Essential for Life Admin
00:03:12
Speaker
Myth number one, it just takes willpower. Yes, I think that's a really common one in terms of people's ability to sort of control their own actions or, you know,
00:03:22
Speaker
get going on things that sometimes are a bit boring. Yeah. So that is the definition of willpower, the ability to control your behavior, your emotions and your urges. I don't know anyone out there who can do this a hundred percent of the time. And obviously, you know, willpower, there's research that's shown that willpower is finite. It kind of runs out at the end of each day.
00:03:45
Speaker
And for anyone who's thought, oh, later on after work, when the kids have gone to bed, I'm going to exercise, or I'm going to start writing that novel, or I'm going to, you know, put in a major task here, it's often quite challenging. So, you know, given that willpower is about emotional regulation and being mindful so that you can respond to something rather than just reacting to things and making intentional choices, it's hard then to think, okay, if I just have more of this
00:04:14
Speaker
then my life admin will be under control because it's tested all day, every day. And I think it's also an interesting one because I know some people think, oh, I'm just going to take a day off work and I'm going to get on top of my life admin or I'm going to take a whole week off work and I'm going to tackle everything. And they wonder why they can't get as much done as perhaps they think they're going to because I think it is that finite thing. There's only so many of those things that you can get through in any one day or any one week. Yeah.
00:04:42
Speaker
So the common wisdom is if you've had a day where you've had to exercise willpower to avoid certain things, whether it's avoiding food that you don't want to be eating or avoiding social media or avoiding certain things, or you've had to exercise willpower to do certain things, so you've made yourself do something, then by evening, you're more likely to succumb to the things that you wanted to avoid or not doing those certain things. So that means two things when it comes to life admin.
00:05:12
Speaker
First, if you're relying on willpower to get on top of it, then doing anything in the evening is likely not to happen because your willpower will be too depleted. So in terms of scheduling your hour of power, unless I guess, you know, unless you have had a day where it's like totally breezy and cruisy, then yeah, go ahead, be my guest, schedule an hour of power for the evening.
Skills and Environment in Life Admin
00:05:33
Speaker
But you might want to offer a morning or a lunchtime so you can make those decisions and do that work during those high willpower moments.
00:05:40
Speaker
And I also think that applies to making the important decisions, because I think often if you try and tackle those things at the end of the day, you might start doing the work and then get 75 percent of the way through and then not be able to make those important decisions to be able to move on. The second thing to think about in terms of willpower is being aware that willpower is only required.
00:06:02
Speaker
when a task or a decision is hard or actually unpleasant. And as you build your life admin skills and you set up your environment to make things easier, then you actually don't need to draw on willpower because the tasks won't demand you to control your emotions because you won't be dreading it. You won't be thinking, oh my God, this is going to be awful because you know, it'll be quick. You know what resources you need to draw on or exactly what the steps might be. So you won't need to force yourself to do that unpleasant thing. It's probably not going to be as unpleasant.
00:06:32
Speaker
So as you get more familiar with the tasks and better at the tasks, they become easier and then willpower is not actually required.
Myth 2: Motivation Drives Life Admin
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah. So a hundred percent willpower, I think is probably the biggest myth when it comes to life admin in terms of people thinking why they haven't got on top of it. So second myth, I think quite related to willpower.
00:06:54
Speaker
It's motivation, so I just can't get motivated to get it done. And it was definitely one of the excuses I used before we had tackled this project. Yeah. And it's often when, you know, when you have had to exert willpower, until you get to that point when something becomes easy or becomes pleasant. And when you think, OK, I'm actually ready to give in on step away, often what helps you is thinking about the long term goal or the long term benefit.
00:07:18
Speaker
or how this is gonna align you with your values in a different way. And if you think about that, that can actually get you further towards your, you know, get it under control, get your life added under control. So that's where that willpower and motivation are quite closely linked because motivation is all about having a reason for acting a certain way or behaving in a particular way. And for me, I guess that, you know, what helped motivate me was thinking, okay, I need more time. I need more time to be freed up
00:07:48
Speaker
from other things, like I'm spending too much time on life admin. And I also wanted peace of mind because I was spending too much time thinking about life admin. And I definitely wanted more household harmony. I needed this to be shared. It was causing a lot of friction. It was making me really angry. So I had these higher goals that were sort of propelling me along this journey of getting this sorted.
00:08:10
Speaker
And that is the key thing that you need for motivation. You need to anchor it in something bigger than just, I want to pay this bill because it's due by the end of the month. That's not always going to get you to sit down and.
00:08:24
Speaker
get out your phone and pay the bill right now as soon as it's arrived in your inbox or in the envelope. For me, sharing the mode was definitely the biggest motivator because I was just, it was all in my inbox, so to speak. And so I really wanted to be able to share that with my husband. But actually when it was the 3am wakeups that I guess are related to that was also kind of the idea of like, I'm carrying all of this. I need to share it because it's stressing me out and burning me out.
00:08:52
Speaker
But interestingly, I think as soon as you get into it and you realize that a few foundational systems can actually make it so much easier, then freeing up time was kind of the motivator to keep going. So I think once you can see that, oh, that actually is going to make things so much easier and easier for myself, but easier to share the load, that helps motivate you to keep going.
BJ Fogg's Behavior Model
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, so it's worth taking some time to reflect and just ask yourself, what is it costing you not to have this sorted? What is that goal or that value that is not being realized? And when we were writing the book, we came across BJ Foggs. We read Tiny Habits and his behavior change model. And he has a model that says behavior change equals motivation times ability times trigger. And this actually became a primary influence for the way we structured the book because
00:09:44
Speaker
We essentially set up each chapter to support behavior change. So the whole, all the stuff around, you know, will this chapter help you save time and money and household harmony and peace of mind and the reality check of the introduction and then the why section of what you were doing.
00:10:00
Speaker
was all about building your motivation to get you to see how this is important and why you should care. And then the when section was all about identifying the triggers for when to do the task. Because that can really trip people up as well. They're like, do I do this anytime? Does it make a difference when I should be doing this? And then the how section gave you the steps and the apps and the websites and all the other resources to raise your ability. So we were like, all right, if we want to see behavior change around this kind of life-admune task,
00:10:29
Speaker
Let's give people the motivation, all the reasons why. Let's give them the ability and show them how to do it. And let's give them the triggers, all of the cues about, you know, whether it's a personal circumstance or some kind of external circumstance. That's the trigger to do this life admin task. Yeah. In the survey that we did a while ago, it was actually, I think the number two reason that people gave of why they couldn't get their life admin under control. So I think 39% of our,
00:10:56
Speaker
survey respondents that it was the biggest obstacle holding them back. But I think when you come down to it, although you definitely need that motivation to get started, I think it probably links into the ability to the third myth we're going to talk about in a minute is about the ability to do it and making it easy to do. And I actually read a quote from James Clear this week that just said, you know, motivation comes and goes. And if you want to do something consistently, then don't pick a level of difficulty that requires great motivation
00:11:26
Speaker
because motivation is actually quite hard. So make it easy enough and simple enough that you'll do it even when you don't feel very motivated. And I guess that's why I think this motivation one is a bit of a myth because the reason why we're not motivated is because we haven't established a life admin system and we don't know how to do it well.
Myth 3: Assumed Competence in Life Admin
00:11:46
Speaker
And so therefore you do need lots of motivation when that's how you've set up your environment. So once you've got those things sorted and motivation isn't the thing that holds me back anymore because
00:11:56
Speaker
It's certainly really easy for me to keep on top of most things. That's it, yeah. So James Clear wrote Atomic Habits, and he's basically talking about that same behavior change that if you increase your ability by attacking an easy task, then you don't need as much motivation, essentially. It's a clever little formula. Also, we were talking about the fact that most people underestimate how useful it is to be crystal clear
00:12:24
Speaker
about when it makes most sense to do some life admin and how this can be a really big blocker. So, you know, for example, private health insurance, this might be something that's on your to-do list and it might sit there for months and months and months. But if you know that April is the time of year when the rate rise kicks in across the industry or that
00:12:44
Speaker
end of financial year is when a lot of them offer their promotions because they know you're going to do your tax and you're going to decide whether it's tax effective or at the end of the calendar year when all your extras allowances reset and they often have promotions around that time then these are some triggers that you can latch on to so that you're not thinking about it for 12 months you know there's a certain time of year when you can you know when you need to care and even with little things like
00:13:09
Speaker
need decluttering. That's a classic, you know, it's one of the biggest pain points for people out there. And it's this general kind of, I should just be decluttering. I need to dedicate a weekend to it. It feels like a big deal. But if you realize there's little triggers, you know, if someone in your household has a birthday, if the kids have a birthday, there's a trigger to have a little clean out of their books and toys and clothes so they can prepare for the influx of stuff. Or if it's grocery shopping day, and you're, you know, working out
00:13:39
Speaker
your meal planning and what you need, that's the time to go through the fridge and chuck out all the carrots that have died in the back of the crisp bar and
00:13:47
Speaker
those sources in the door of the fridge that you don't even know what they are anymore. That's when you do the decluttering instead of having to put aside an entire weekend.
Improving Life Admin Through Systems
00:13:56
Speaker
That starts to feel enormous. Who's got the time to put a whole weekend away for that? That starts to feel overwhelming. Okay, myth number three, Diane. Yeah, so I think we've already talked about a little bit, but that myth is that people think
00:14:10
Speaker
They know how to do life admin. They know how to do it well. That's not what's holding them back. And definitely I think people overestimate their ability, particularly when it comes to some of the things like around comparison shopping. So in our survey, only 12% of people thought knowing how to do it was a biggest, you know, was one of their main obstacles. Definitely when you start to get into some of those more technical areas, you know, people say that it's time and they say that it's motivation, but actually it's probably because they actually don't know enough
00:14:40
Speaker
They don't know where to start and so therefore they don't get started.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I can see why people think this. I mean, we would have thought this diner, because we're smart, we're professional educated women, like, and it's pretty, you know, it feels basic. You get a piece of paper, you got to do a task on the computer, you do some stuff, like that's within our wheelhouse. But when you get, as you said, when you look under the hood of some of these tasks, you're like, oh, I just actually don't know which website to look at. And I'm sure you did a little workshop during the week and someone was like, I have to do
00:15:11
Speaker
My car insurance, and there's so many comparison sites, is there a particular comparison site I should go to? And it's like, well, yeah, there are comparison sites that are better for one thing than another. And you do have a handful of criteria that you need to care about and you can ignore half of the other guff. So, you know, if you ask people, what are the steps involved for estate planning and all the various legal documents required, or which criteria you should focus on to compare your electricity plan,
00:15:39
Speaker
or what are the ways to reduce the time spent buying a bazillion gifts at Christmas, while at one level you're like, well, I can work it out. But you don't really have that mastery, which is what makes it easy. Yeah, and I think for us, even when we got started, we didn't actually realize that cloud storage and password managers and having a shared calendar, that those things that we all knew about, that actually those would make big differences to the way we managed our life admin.
00:16:09
Speaker
I think for a lot of people, there is a knowledge gap there that they're probably not even aware that they've got. So definitely can be a myth. But I do think the flip side can also be true because I think while some people overestimate their ability to do life admin and think that's motivation holding them back, we certainly hear from lots of people, oh, I'm just not organized. This is just not my thing. I'm just always going to be disorganized and I can't do it.
00:16:36
Speaker
So I think that's an interesting myth, too, that you that you're either fully organized or fully not organized, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know if it's a binary thing. Well, actually, look, we did we did talk to Ellen Jackson, psychologist about this, and she talked about the big five personality traits.
00:16:55
Speaker
So there's, oh, can I remember the ocean? That's the acronym. There's extraversion. I should have started with O. There's openness. There's openness. There's conscientiousness, extraversion. The A is agreeableness. And N is sort of neuroticism, how emotionally stable you are. And conscientiousness is related to how organized you are, how disciplined you are. It really helps at school. It can help you be organized in life. Diana and I have both
00:17:26
Speaker
would be pretty high with that conscientiousness trait. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough because we didn't have the ability. We didn't know what we were doing. We can make time for it, set aside time, and have all the resources. But until you fill that knowledge gap, it's not going to become easier.
00:17:43
Speaker
And even if you fall on sort of low on that conscientiousness, it doesn't mean that you can't do your life admin. Well, you just kind of got to need to know yourself and put the right systems in place that, you know, recognize where you are on that spectrum and reward in the things that are important to
Myth 4: Lack of Time for Life Admin
00:17:58
Speaker
you. And then, you know, you can do just as good a job, save as much time as anyone else, but it's really about understanding where you are and what motivates you. Yeah. So if you're investing in learning better ways, better apps, better websites to consult,
00:18:12
Speaker
Obviously you have this podcast, you have our book, you have friends, there's a bazillion ways to learn all this stuff. And it means if you increase your ability and it's easier to make those behavior changes, it's all going to feel easier. So think of that, that little weird, that
00:18:27
Speaker
behavior change model if you're highly aware of your triggers and you have that higher ability then your motivation doesn't have to be earth moving to get this stuff underway okay myth number four is that where we're at we're at this number four I just need more time
00:18:43
Speaker
Oh, and everyone, we just had two years where we had lots of spare time and are you on top of everything on your life admin front? Oh, any front. Any front. Yes, that's true. Definitely all of those lockdowns taught us that even given more spare time with no commuting, no social lives, no extracurricular activities, we didn't all magically tie up all the loose hens in our lives. We didn't get fitter.
00:19:10
Speaker
or we didn't declutter our houses or learn musical instruments. So we definitely know that time is not the answer. Yeah. Again, our research showed that most people try to do life admin in an ad hoc way. Only about 5% had a dedicated time slot to actually do it. You kind of think things that happen in any time don't tend to happen at all often. And when it comes down to it, most life admin tasks don't take too long. The majority fall in that two minutes too easy category.
00:19:39
Speaker
when it's gonna take you two minutes or less, or in that 10 minute time killer category, where you might have to sit down for five minutes or so, and then it's done. And it's really problematic if you then let these little tasks pile up instead of chipping away each week, or if you don't do those two minutes too easy tasks, you can't just procrastinate instead and let them pile up. So the first step is really having that hour of power and approaching it in a methodical sense, and you will really, within
00:20:08
Speaker
quite short span of time, feel like you're getting some momentum and realise that you can actually get through a lot of this stuff if you just dedicate a regular time each week.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, so unless you're really doing something that you need to concentrate like, you know, like those comparison shopping or, you know, maybe your taxes or reviewing your super or those sorts of things, you really don't want to accumulate those tasks. So having those foundational systems in place so that you can chip away at them either immediately as they hit your inbox or, you know, in that white space rather than scrolling the gram, you know, other sort of tasks that you might use to kill off 10 minutes between meetings, say,
00:20:48
Speaker
It definitely makes a huge difference. So in terms of time as well, there is that element around prioritizing how you're actually spending your time. And you do need to ruthlessly prioritize when it comes to life admin. There's a lot that might end up in your to-do list that doesn't belong there. It's a red herring. It is not something that a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, you'll care about.
00:21:11
Speaker
So constantly scrutinize what is on your list and whether you actually need to do it. And then delegate what you can, share what you can and outsource what you can. If you value your time.
00:21:24
Speaker
you'll use it more shrewdly and women's time is notoriously undervalued by society and themselves. Yeah, I think lots of us have. I think that's another aspect of I need more time. It's like, well, do you need to be actually doing all of these things? And the answer often is no. I think one of your favorite sayings, which I like too, is that people get the shoulds. I should do that. I should do this. I should do that. So it's about letting go of some of that and really being clear on what's important to you and only putting those things on your life admin radar.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, I heard someone say once, stop shooting all over yourself. And I was just like, oh.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah. Stop. So yeah, I, you know, in terms of the way you value your time, I have two female friends who are both partners in there. One's a partner in a law firm and one's a partner in a management consulting firm. They work huge hours. They have huge salaries. They get huge bonuses. They tell me their bonuses and I'm like, Oh my God, it's like half of my bloody yield
Myth 5: Paper Systems Are Sufficient
00:22:22
Speaker
wage. They've got these massive amounts of responsibility and neither of them have cleaners.
00:22:27
Speaker
They spend hours every weekend cleaning their house. And I've said to them when they've told me this, can you imagine a male partner in your firm doing this? I just think about your 80 year old self thinking, is this the best way to spend these years when your kids at this age and actually want to hang out with you?
00:22:46
Speaker
And when your body's at this strong and you can spend that time mountain biking, are you really going to think spreading this time cleaning was the thing to do on a weekend? So there's a lot of questions to ask yourself, you know, and some of these are tough questions. Are you letting some unhelpful beliefs get in the way of essentially much more happiness, much more happiness overall?
00:23:09
Speaker
Is it time to let go of some beliefs that you've hung on to for a really long time and start questioning whether they're still serving you? So yes, think about hour of power, think about prioritizing and sharing and outsourcing. OK, so we've debunked the four myths. Final one, paper, both of us.
00:23:29
Speaker
We both have quite heavily paper-reliant systems before we started this project a few years ago. And we're still here. The myth is my paper system is fine. This is working fine. My diary is fine. This notebook is fine. Yeah. And when you look online, certainly the market for paper planners is still, it's very strong. So there are so many beautiful, you know, and I can even be tempted when I see them. They look so pretty.
00:23:55
Speaker
You know, there is a kind of idea of having it. And definitely I actually do. I've got a little journal next to my bed where I write stuff in and definitely use paper for that. But that's just for sharing my thoughts. I definitely know that going paperless, having digital calendars, and I guess all of those digital tools that we talk about, those are definitely game changers. Yeah. So we're not, we're not saying paper is forbidden. It really is horses for courses here in terms of what your pain points are. So are you still paper for a few things?
00:24:24
Speaker
If I'm on the phone and I need to write down something like when I'm during a call that's for a to-do list or a reference list and I can't actually type things into the phone because I'm on the phone, then I'll write it on a piece of paper but I will transfer it across or if I'm going to do it straight away, I'll just have it on the paper. And I actually have a stack of paper next to my computer because I have those little daily calendars where you rip off a thing each day.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I use the back of them to scribble notes. And I have the end of the day, I have a very satisfying pile on the other side. Cause I write down a note and then I'll do the thing and then I'll chuck it in this pile and I, you know, I can actually see my progress. But for life admin, there are just too many benefits to having it in your phone, in the systems.
00:25:10
Speaker
that and we'll go through some of those benefits. But there are some scenarios where paper still makes sense. The other thing, obviously, is I have a folder that's got all sorts of vouchers and tickets in it. And the one thing where I do find myself drawing on paper is if I have to book a holiday where I've got to look at the flights and I've got to write down the
00:25:28
Speaker
the arrivals and the departures and the fares and comparing roommates. I need to do that on paper. I can't do that on screen. There's something about, it's just scary about getting those things wrong, but I feel better if I wrote it down on a piece of paper. But then obviously it all goes in some sort of digital itinerary afterwards, but I need it on a paper so I can compare them while I'm on the computer.
00:25:49
Speaker
Everything else is digital for me. For me, I do all those comparisons in Excel, but everyone knows how much I love Excel. So I definitely still write notes. You can see I've got post-it notes here, Mia, next to the desk. But yeah, I try and clear those every day, like I scribble, scribble, scribble, and those are more thought bubbles.
00:26:07
Speaker
But I do think if you're single and you live alone and you don't need to consult with anyone else about your time or need to share tasks, then probably a paper planner and to-do list is fine if you're happy to carry it around in a bag with you. I don't even carry a bag with me anymore now that you can put everything on your phone. I don't even need a credit card anymore. I carry a car key and a phone in most places. But if you're happy to carry a planner in a bag, then I think that that's probably
00:26:37
Speaker
Fine, I don't think there's any huge efficiency savings for people who are in that situation.
Transitioning to Digital Systems
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, there's also the scenario, if you're happy playing the CEO of your household and you're happy to carry the mental load that goes along with that, and you don't need to share it with other people, by all means, stick to your paper system. And I guess that goes along with that is, you know, some of the people who have to have that calendar alignment conversation with their partner, the are we free? Can I go? If you're happy having that conversation every other day and it's not annoying you, then
00:27:07
Speaker
stick with this system. That conversation used to drive me bananas. I just, I felt like I was, it was a groundhog day. I like, we're doing this again, we need to get on sync, we need to have a single source of truth that would kill me. And I guess finally if you've got loads of space in your home and you just have a love of paper filing systems and you like to have everything in hard copy, then I guess yes, you know, continue with your hard copy filing systems. But
00:27:31
Speaker
When we talk about the benefits, you might see the light as we did of moving to everything digital. Yeah, there's also avoiding the double handling of everything because some people will write it in a paper notebook and then have to put it into a diary or a digital version. So we'd like to wean you off that paper and just skip that step and go straight to digital if you're almost there already.
00:27:51
Speaker
But yeah, all the benefits. So obviously the first one, when it's on your phone and you can access it from your computer or your tablet, then it's actually accessible from anywhere you happen to be. Whether you're at home, you're at work, you're in the car, you're in a line, you're in the cinema and you're waiting for the movie to start, like you can just access this information. You'll always have it with you, which makes it incredibly convenient.
00:28:14
Speaker
to do these life admin tasks whenever it's convenient, essentially, not just when you're at home in front of your computer. Yeah. And I think then that sort of that added benefit as well is that you can do things immediately. So I think sometimes when you think about a two minute too easy task, if an email comes in, but you don't have access to the one piece of information you need to respond to or the one
00:28:37
Speaker
thing, then it makes it a task that you have to add to your to-do list. So if you've got everything accessible, you can do things immediately. So many more tasks then fall into that two minute too easy. Particularly for me, one of the big benefits was filing. Like I still like to keep a lot of documents to consult them. I like to keep utility bills so that I can use them to compare. But being able to do one click and file a document into our cloud storage
00:29:02
Speaker
means that it becomes sort of a non-task rather than something that builds up and becomes an enormous task. Another benefit is that it's shareable. So you can give others access, other people can contribute, things become transparent, things that were hidden before become visible. So when it comes to things like household harmony, this has been a game changer for so many people we've talked to because that shared calendar suddenly shows
00:29:29
Speaker
the actual truth of how everyone's spending their time and lets people know when they're available and all the commitments that are going on with the family members. One of the other benefits, and we've certainly seen that played out very recently where we've had more terrible floods in Queensland and New South Wales,
00:29:46
Speaker
But if you've got everything in the cloud, that even if you lose your phone, even if you lose your computer, that it's all there as soon as you can get back on another device, you can get back to all of your important information rather than having it potentially damaged or lost if it's in your home.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, so it's all backed up in the cloud. All right, big one for me, that whole idea of decluttering, getting rid of all the paper clutter, decluttering your bag, decluttering your desk, decluttering your house. I'm a big believer in outer order in a calm. I can't function in chaotic spaces. So this was beautiful for me to get to actually free up desk space
00:30:27
Speaker
I had these shelves above my decks that were just heaving with stuff. I literally had warranty folders with things like hanging out of them. It felt like a physical burden to me. It was visceral. It was a beautiful feeling of lightness when all of that went when we went paperless. I used to have that horrible pile on the kitchen bench, which I think so many people have of paper forms and
00:30:49
Speaker
mail and all sorts of things and now that's just just really like you know I did get a paper form actually this week from my daughter's school and I was like so irritated because you know just about everything is online now so it's funny how those you know when there's one piece of paper it becomes
00:31:07
Speaker
quite a nuisance compared to dealing with all of the digital stuff. We got a paper, piece of paper given to all the students in my son's school about a fundraising event. And the piece of paper was about telling us to go online to do all the things. And I was like, could this have been an email?
00:31:24
Speaker
Come on. And that's the other thing, you know, there's the environmental aspect of this. You can reduce your carbon footprint immensely by going digital with all this stuff and using fewer paper resources. So I guess, you know, in terms of this myth, it's really about what your pain points are. If you have pain points about sharing the load, if you have pain points that people do not know what's going on in your household, or you're just sick of dragging around, you know, diaries and notebooks,
00:31:52
Speaker
then this is one of the things that's going to alleviate that. And you know, Diana and I, we had Filofaxes our entire time at uni. I still love my Filofax. I still love going getting the calendar insert at the start of the year and putting it in and getting rid of the old one. But
00:32:07
Speaker
And I actually, you know, I think we talked about this when I'm going paperless episode back in my episode, what is it? Two, three, four. You know, I had to wean myself off the paper calendar that was on the wall.
Encouragement to Embrace Digital Tools
00:32:19
Speaker
And I, I felt really vulnerable about that. I was like, I just, I needed, I thought I needed that visual, but I have.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've changed. I feel comfortable with looking at a computer screen and seeing that calendar view now. I don't need it on the wall. So I think that wraps up all of our myths for today. And I'd love to hear from any listeners who think that some of those myths have been holding them back. So do you think you just need more willpower or more motivation? Do you think that it's actually that you know how to do it or do you think that it's about having more time?
00:32:51
Speaker
Or are you nervous about going paperless? So hopefully we've dispelled some of those myths for you today and that you do have the motivation now and will find the time to get started on streamlining your life admin. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeagminlifehacks.com and if you're a fan
00:33:13
Speaker
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