Importance of Reliable Networks
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Introduction to Life Admin Podcast
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This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Diana Roberts, an operations manager who used to struggle to say no, but I'm getting better at it. I'm Leah Northrop, a researcher and writer
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He thinks the most precious commodities on earth are time, energy and attention. In the words of Steve Jobs, deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. And this is definitely true of life admin. In this episode, we'll take you through some of our top hacks of how to decide what not to do.
Managing Life Admin for Working Parents
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Hello and welcome to life admin life hacks. Life admin is never ending. The bills, the emails, the forms, they're never going to stop. And while it's important to have systems to tackle your life admin efficiently,
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It's also important to realise that not every life admin task is made equal. Sometimes you just have to say no.
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And we wanted to address this topic because we are not fans of the, you can do it all. And here's how rhetoric, we kind of used to be wired that way. That's how we got into this life admin best in this first place. And we know that the majority of our audience are working parents and people who can optimize their life admin to free up their time for better things. And part of this is also being aware of the frequency you do certain life admin tasks, which tasks to take off your plate and onto someone in the household or outsourced.
00:01:58
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and which task to take off the table altogether.
Aligning Personal Values with Tasks
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Yeah, I think there's lots of dimensions to this kind of reducing and minimizing the amount of life admin that you have in your life. And I think like the most important place to start is that really understanding where you are in your season of life and what's like your values and goals, what's important to you so that you can really think about where to focus your attention, particularly if your life admins in complete disarray or you're particularly short on time.
00:02:28
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It really can help you figure out where you should focus your efforts. Yeah, you can't do it all. We're saying you probably don't need to do it all because some of it's really what we're doing. For me, the season of life where I'm working full-time, I've got school-aged kids with all that extracurricular stuff.
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co-parenting, and for me, I'm very protective of my time. I just need time to venge. I need time to exercise. I need time to catch up with my friends. Otherwise, I'm going to become a bitter, twisted lady. That is my priority right now. It's like I just need to have a little buffer of time to do things that are nurturing for me. And that means that I've had to come to terms with outsourcing some stuff, particularly around home maintenance,
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I moved into this house six months ago. Everywhere I look, there's like little jobs, little things that I need fixing or I want to tweak in some way. You know, I could spend all my evenings, my weekends doing that, but I wouldn't have time to do the stuff that's, you know, hanging out with my kids or seeing friends or doing exercise. It's a bit more nurturing. So I've realized I have to outsource some of that stuff. And that means there's a trade-off and I'm going to be spending my money on that.
Transition to Full-Time Work and Household Management
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It means I'm not spending money on clothes, which isn't a massive deal for me because I'm a massive unbuyer. You mean the clothes or books where I often have hemorrhaged money or even alcohol. I realized how much I would spend on alcohol and I've changed my habits there for health reasons and a good night's sleep, but also for financial reasons. Also, the amount of money I was spending eating out, I've sort of rethought that and having more people over.
00:04:07
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So, yeah, for me, when I think about the life admin tasks that are out there, I'm like, OK, what can I, what will I focus on that's going to give me time back and not take up too much time? What about you, Diane? What's your priorities right now? Yeah, well, I'm also back at work full time after having quite a long time of working in part time roles. And so although, you know, when I reflect on it, it's not actually time, although time is important, saving time.
00:04:32
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For me, it's making sure that I've got that peace of mind because I find it really hard to, you know, cope, I guess, manage life where I feel like I've got those 3 a.m. wakeups, where I feel like things aren't under control and our household isn't streamlined and running smoothly and everyone knows what's going on. So for me at the moment, it's really making sure that we are really on top of our calendar, that everyone in the family is contributing to making sure that our calendar
00:04:58
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is up to date and that it's not overloaded and that things are added to the list and that we're making progress through them and everyone's doing their fair share so that I feel like we are running as smooth as possible as that is possible with two teenagers in the house and two parents working full time and a pet and all of the things that go along with that.
Essentialism and Task Prioritization
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So really making sure that those things are nailed makes our whole life more enjoyable and makes me a better person to be around.
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Greg McKeon wrote a book called Essentialism, The Discipline Pursuit of Less. And we both read this as sort of research for earlier podcast episodes and for the book. And it's an excellent book about focusing on the signal and filtering out the noise in life. And he has this model. Actually, what I really like about this book too is the diagrams that kind of just sort of sum up some of the thinking. So there's one diagram where if you imagine a circle and in the middle it says energy,
00:05:55
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And it's got all these little arrows radiating out of it in different directions and different heights. And that's sort of the idea that of someone pursuing a whole bunch of different directions and tasks at the same time, you don't get very far. All those arrows are pretty short. Whereas if you think of a different circle with the word energy and one big arrow, because you're focusing on one particular thing and you just get so much further if you don't multitask essentially and focus on one thing.
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So he has this model to help you identify whether you are what he calls an essentialist, pursuing the call less is better kind of thing.
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or a non-essentialist, where you might be living a life that's feeling a little less satisfied because you're feeling stretched. So, Dyke, I'm going to read out some of these things and you can hear your bingo. I think we've never liked to find a bit of what was happening on the non-essentialist side of things, particularly a couple of years ago. So, a non-essentialist thinks, I have to. That was me. That was so me.
00:06:54
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It's all important. And how can I fit it all in? I feel like that one, that's how I think, how can I fit it all in? And that's probably the question that we get a lot from people is like, how do you fit all this stuff? How do you fit it all in? And the idea is no, we're not fitting it all in. We're thinking about the few things that really matter. And there's the idea that you don't have to, you actually have a choice. You have to make a choice and recognize that you have choices in how you spend your time.
00:07:23
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So the next thing is around, they react to what's most pressing. They say yes to people without thinking. And they try to force execution at the last moment. So you just...
00:07:33
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But probably procrastinating and then doing it because you feel like, I have to. The yes thing, I think, is one of those reflexes that a lot of people have where someone asks you to do something, can you help with something, can you do whatever? And you're like, yeah. And then you're like, oh my God, why did I say this to them? Why did I have time? I don't want to or whatever. But you have that reflex that you have to retrain. And I used to go to lots of social events with people who I didn't really like.
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because they would ask me. And it was only, you know, when you reflect and think, actually, I, you know, there's other people who I really like spending time with. Why am I, you know, you effectively end up doing things you don't enjoy with people you don't like very much if you say yes too much. And I was definitely in that camp a few years ago. So the flip side of that is pausing to discern what really matters, saying no to everything except the essential
Finding Joy in Essential Tasks
00:08:25
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and removing obstacles to make execution easy. I think that's a big one is when you have decided where you're going to focus is sort of setting up your environment so you can do it as effectively as you can. Okay. And the final buckets here, he talks about a non-essentialist. You take on too much and you suffer your work suffers.
00:08:43
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You feel out of control and you feel overwhelmed and exhausted. On the flip side there is that you've chosen carefully to do great work. You feel in control and you experience joy in the journey. I think that's a big sign actually when you are doing something and you're just resenting it. You wish you were doing something else. You procrastinate about it. Instead of coming to it joyfully, that's a big sign that you're probably not doing something that's essential to you.
00:09:10
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Yeah, definitely. And I think that in the past I used to feel almost bereft if I didn't have a weekend that was full of events. And now I feel, and I guess almost felt guilty, the thought that I hadn't scheduled myself to the hilt. And now I feel the, you know, I definitely feel like every weekend I need to do something social and
00:09:29
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something that gets me in nature, but I also feel like I need to make sure there's space.
Efficient Life Admin Techniques
00:09:34
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Deciding what I want to do based on how I'm feeling at the moment, at that time, rather than being over-scheduled.
00:09:43
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You're reminding me of the wonderful podcast we did with the Money Mindset coach who talked about having a spacious week with Nicole Alicia. Yeah, that's right. That contrast to say, how was your week? Super busy. It's like, oh, I've had a very spacious week. Like, how long have you raised? I love the idea of spacious weekends, too. I kind of start to feel like I get cabin fever if I... That's not the right term. It's not really cabin fever, but there's this sort of feeling of claustrophobia and being hem-did if I have too much going on on the weekend.
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I really do need to rest so I think another aspect of really thinking about what not to do and maybe it's strictly not what to do but it's really thinking about how far to go when it comes to some of your life admin tasks and we actually talk a lot in our book about in the section around comparison shopping about this concept of
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satisfying a satisfactory result as fast as possible. It definitely applies to comparison shopping, but I think it can apply in lots of other areas of life admin where I think people can get caught up in trying to find the perfect solution like meal planning. Coming up with amazing nutritious meals for seven nights of the week,
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It can become gift buying where you really feel like you need to buy the perfect gift for everyone. Or even when it comes to things like decluttering, and actually someone asked me the other day, your home must be so perfectly organized and every cupboard must be pristine. It's like, no.
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You know, I've done enough decluttering that it's easy enough for me to find what I have and for us to put things away, but there's no beautiful clear plastic boxes and baskets in my cupboards. The decluttering is just, you know, enough that it makes life easy to run. Yeah, I think the key thing there is
00:11:27
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knowing that the essence of decluttering is being able to find stuff that you want and access it easily. And knowing what you have, it's not about the little acrylic boxes, making it look stunning with a beautiful color palette. I mean, if you've got the time and energy, go for it. But don't feel like because you haven't got that far that you haven't actually decluttered properly. I'm a big fan of that.
00:11:50
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For me, one of the things that really, you know, I was a bit of a perfectionist when it came to a lot of things. How that unfolded in my life was I'd get one or two things done, but then there'd be the other 15 that really do need to get done. But I didn't get to them because I'd done the other three to such a high standard. So really embracing that Sheryl Sandberg, you know, done is better than perfect has really changed, I guess, a lot of my thinking around a lot of these tasks around
00:12:15
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whipping through them as quickly as possible, these 10 minute time killers, making sure I scatter them through the week. And so it means that when I get to the weekend, there's not a long list of things to do. And it's not waking me up at 3 a.m. thinking of all the things I haven't done because I'm just chipping away, doing them quickly, maybe not to a perfect standard, but enough. They're getting off my out of my brain and just complete.
00:12:38
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Yeah, it's that classic 80-20 rule, that Pareto principle, where 80% of your outputs come from 20% of your effort. So it's worth, you don't have to blow yourself up and do 110% on everything here. I recently saw energy bills in Australia.
00:12:58
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eye watering. Usually, or annually, I will have a look at the prices I'm paying and I'll do a comparison shot. But in my current house, I've only been here for six months, but I got one of my first gas bills and I gulped. I'm not going to do the full deal right now, but I'm just going to call my provider and have the chat about whether I'm on the right plan and what I can do. I managed to save some money that way. There was a bit of a moment of
00:13:26
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saying, look, I'm thinking, OK, I don't have time to do the full comparison chat, but this is a step in the right direction and it's going to have to do for now. And I'll be doing it again in six months time anyway. So it's nice to sort of catch yourself in those moments and realise, all right, this is the outcome I'm looking for. This is how much time I'm spending to spend on this and cut it there. Similarly with meal planning for me, I've just I've been on a journey with meal planning done.
00:13:52
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I think when I first separated, because my ex-husband had done most of a lot of the cooking, when I first separated, I used to lean so heavily on the meal plan. I really would get
00:14:03
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panicked at five o'clock. I have a Fitbit. The version of my Fitbit has like a stress sensor and it will ping you and say, how are you feeling right now? When you are giving off like the sweat and the electrical signals in your body that you're on your heart. And it happens when I used to be getting dinner ready. I won't tell you what time it happens now.
00:14:26
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Yeah, and so I used to get this little signal. And so I took a little lean really heavily on like HelloFresh and having my meal kits and having this crystal plan that I knew exactly what I was cooking and what cookbook from. And now fast forward a couple of years. Obviously, I've learnt cooking skills.
00:14:44
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My repertoire has expanded. And actually, I should thank HelloFresh for that because I think I cooked the same thing so many times. It just got embedded. But I don't meal plan to the same degree. I will meal plan fortnightly. It's a lot looser. I feel more confident. So it's nice to recognize. I actually don't need to spend that much time on this anymore. I can put my time anywhere else.
Streamlining Gift Buying
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Yeah, it's something that I have wound down a little.
00:15:10
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I've definitely done that when it comes to buying gifts for kids birthday parties. It's been something that we used to, I guess, quite heavily lean into buying books for kids because that was easy to do. But now the kids are teenagers. They're kind of it's not cool. I don't think to buy books for teenagers.
00:15:26
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So now the rule is if you can buy it on Amazon and it can be delivered, that's a gift you're allowed to buy, otherwise we give a gift voucher or cash. Or the kid can go and buy the present for their friend themselves. I don't have time or energy for that. So I think really just letting go or really lowering the level of the standard to which you need to operate makes a huge difference and just accepting that you can't do everything in life and that's not the most important thing to me right now.
00:15:54
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Yeah. And for some people, it might not be around sort of lowering standards, but actually just tweaking the frequency of what you're doing something. So if you have something that you're normally doing weekly or monthly or quarterly, you might think, okay, is this, you know, can I change that? Can I do it less frequently? Does it make much of a difference and win back some time that way? Take a little load off.
00:16:16
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So I think another principle that is really close to my heart and has been a bit of a struggle through our whole life admin journey is really thinking about when you do divide tasks to other members of your family or give them to someone else to do is to truly let go of them and not come to the rescue when the person does not complete
Effective Delegation and Sharing Responsibility
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the task. I think if you've got a partner and they've agreed to take this on,
00:16:40
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It can be so easy to leave in and rescue them when you see that they are perhaps dropping the ball or even if they're just not quite doing it the way you would do it and i still find it quite hard to bite my tongue but when you don't help out what happens is when you do sort of leap in and either you know try and fix them.
00:17:01
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Usually they get defensive, they get angry, and then it can get quite tense. And what I've now learned, you really just have to bite your tongue, let the natural consequence play out, and then whatever happens, they have to fix whatever problem they create. So, for example, for a whole year I had my husband in charge of meal planning and grocery shopping. There were many nights when there was no food to be had.
00:17:29
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Dinner was very late because he hadn't planned. I knew when he should do it, but I just didn't say anything.
00:17:35
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He slowly figured it out. We were never going to die of starvation. Yes, sometimes the kids went to bed a bit later than I would have hoped, but he actually now knows how to actively contribute to meal planning and grocery shopping. He also recognizes how much headspace and time it can take up. I think really letting that play out is so important if you truly want to get to a position where you're sharing the load. Yeah. There's a few important things you've raised there. There's that once of that self-control of just
00:18:05
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holding yourself back and looking in the other direction, let it play out. It's hard to do, but you've got to play the long game. It works itself out. And the other thing is that idea that if you do step in and rescue or micromanage, then they're not going to want to do that task. You're not, you know, it's impossible to delegate if you're going to hover. It won't be picked up. It'll come back to you. One of the other things I've learned is if it's truly important to me how it's done or that it gets done on time, I need to actually just take it on myself.
00:18:33
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because otherwise I will, you know, will cause tension and frustration and I will actually leap in. So I have to really be careful about choosing the things that I'm not worried about or that, you know, if they if they do fail, yes, it might not be great, but it's not going to be so distressing to me and so anxiety provoking that I feel like I have to jump in. So really thinking quite selectively about how you divide your tasks up to things that aren't so important to you.
Prioritizing Social Engagements
00:18:59
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Yeah, self-awareness there.
00:19:02
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really makes you tick. And there are a couple of things in terms of life I'd been that just aren't worth pursuing. One of them was around, we talked, we had a bit of a chuckle when we were preparing for this session, was around your social life. And there can be this situation that you find yourself in where
00:19:20
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you have arranged catch-ups or events with friends and they just don't reciprocate. Like it's always you initiating the catch-up and making the suggestion and you're waiting for them to go, yeah, why don't you guys come with a draw? Let's go to whatever. And it just doesn't happen. And we were talking about this some time ago and I actually, I listened to Gretchen Rubin's happier podcast and I actually emailed her in. I'm like,
00:19:44
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We have this situation. We organize this thing and, you know, people cancel at the last minute or they can't. It's just it was driving us bananas. It was really interesting because she she talked about it on her show and she asked listeners for their advice and their recommendation. And some of it was around having more empathy around what's going on in those people's lives, why they can't reciprocate or why they are flaky and don't show or cancel in the last minute.
00:20:14
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And people talked about, you know, tricky relationship situations and family situations and money situations that might prevent people from, you know, reciprocating. And then the other part of the advice was often just let them go. Let them go.
00:20:29
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Let those people go. If it's frustrating you so much, then hang out with different people or change the expectation of how you'll hang out. So in the book, we talk about the people priority and the event priority of your social life. Sometimes it's about the people. You really want to hang out with these people. You don't really care what you do as long as you're doing something together.
00:20:51
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The other end of that spectrum is the event priority where it's like you really want to do the thing, you want to go to the movie, you want to see the show. You don't really care who you do it with. So sometimes it's around recognizing that and switching up your expectations. Where have you made changes for yourself and your social life done?
00:21:08
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I actually created a list. We'll talk about this in another episode. I've created a list of the people who are most important to me. And those are the ones I really focus on giving my invitations to, if that makes sense. I've really thought about who I want to invite to things. And so there's other people who I'll do stuff with, but I really wait for them to kind of make the plans or whatever. I'm not really proactively
00:21:32
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contacting them to organize social events and i also really focused on thinking about what are the things that are really important to me so like. I've got a subscription to the theater which is something i really enjoy doing and so you know it's less important who i go with that made sure that i'm really focusing on the things that i really enjoy doing as well so.
00:21:51
Speaker
I have really changed mine. I do feel less resentful to others because of that, because I'm really focusing on doing the things I want to do and being with the people I want to do. And I probably have also just accepted there are some people in my life who I really like spending time with who are just very bad at initiating.
Managing Overwhelming Inboxes
00:22:08
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And I don't think it is a reflection on how much they value me as a friend. I think it's just a reflection on who they are in their season of life. So I think I've probably become a bit kinder towards my thoughts to them.
00:22:22
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And you know who you are. I'm just hoping I'm on that list. So the other thing we talked about was people with email that's out of control. Email inboxes where you have that little red dot, that little red number is in the hundreds or thousands of unread emails. And I'm sure there's people listening and nodding like, yeah, that's me. Just sometimes people are like, how do I get this under control? I need to unsubscribe from things.
00:22:50
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Sometimes it is worth just declaring email bankruptcy and starting again. You don't have the time to wrestle an account that's got hundreds or thousands of unread emails under control. The advice here really is to get all of that stuff. You can archive, you can put all in a folder if you think there might be something that you want to search up in the future and just start with a fresh inbox. And then as things are coming in,
00:23:16
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you are unsubscribing or you can use an unsubscribe service. If you Google the latest unsubscribe services, they will go through and they will list all the things that you're subscribed to and you can bulk unsubscribe. I think one of the other areas where I have really focused is I used to do a lot of filing and I think we've talked about this in the past and I'm now really focused on thinking about which things need to be filed at all, like which things do I need to keep because it is it's not a long task, but it is a task that needs to be done. So
00:23:46
Speaker
Are you talking about email filing or does any documents? Mostly email filing, but usually attachments that come with emails and really thinking about I still do actually need to file some utility bills and those sorts of things because I do use them to claim working from home expenses and things like that. So but I've really thought about which of the ones that I am going to claim for tax and which things I'm not. And so therefore the ones that I'm not, I just simply archive the email. I could find it if I needed to. But the reality is it's way quicker
00:24:15
Speaker
to file those bills you do need for your tax return as you go rather than trying to, at the end of the year, do some mammoth task of searching through your email, looking for every single mobile phone bill and et cetera bills. So I've been quite conscious of which I will file and which ones I do not. So that's been an effort. If I used to file probably most utility bills and now I don't file some of them.
00:24:37
Speaker
Unless I change provider, I don't file any of that stuff because I'm just logging into my account and they're all there.
Automation for Time Savings
00:24:44
Speaker
If I change provider, you will need to go. Yeah. So that's, I think that was the trick I fell into before was that I changed provider during the year and then I couldn't get them. So now I like, file as I go, I really think about what's needs to be filed. And I also, one of the things I used to do is I have used to have lots of email folders and now I just have archive. I just got in my shared system.
00:25:04
Speaker
I don't know what I'm saying. I've never wanted to put it in. Let that stuff go. I'm glad. I'm glad because I felt bad that I wasn't putting it in. Well, I think now that the email search functionality is so good, you don't really need it. Whereas I think a few years ago, if you wanted to find things that often was quite difficult now, there is no reason to have more than one folder. Another area of life I'd been where we both scaled down radically was, you know, approach to investments.
00:25:32
Speaker
probably from talking to some money coach or getting into the coaching world and so many people talk about money and learning about my money habits and thinking, oh, I used to be really interested in investments and what's going on there. And I used to spend so much time researching stocks and reading about what's happening in the economy and different industries and buying specific stocks. And then we're thinking, this is taking so much time, not particularly getting the returns I think for, and deciding to automate the entire thing through ETFs. So I signed up to
00:26:02
Speaker
There's a few out there. I signed up for one called Stock Spot where you can allocate a certain lump of funds to be transferred across on a monthly basis and you pick the ETFs that you're interested in. ETFs are exchange traded funds. They buy an amalgam of stocks in different areas.
00:26:23
Speaker
And they just invested for you. And it's just such a load off. And I know they're probably going to perform better than my personal stock picking because as experts at the helm and the whole thing is automated. And I like, you know, if I have more time in the future to do all that research, I might come back in. But at this stage, I'm like, yeah, this is not an area of life that I have time for. And I'm not doing particularly.
Key Tips for Efficient Life Admin
00:26:49
Speaker
And I think another area where we talk about life admin to stop doing in the book in particular is thinking about just getting all your bills automated on direct debits and, you know, trusting that the providers are getting it right because, you know, most times they do. And so if you don't have the time for it to stop paying bills and just let it happen automatically. Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
And knowing that there's usually flexibility around the frequency, you know, there's payment arrangements you can have. They're quite flexible when you actually have a chat to a provider so that you can time it with your, you know, your sources of income or if you have a lumpy income, you can work around those kinds of things. All right. I'm hoping that this has given people some time back and a bit of a lowering of the shoulders to think, okay, I don't have to do everything. I don't have to do everything all the time and I don't have to do some things at all.
Conclusion and Social Media Information
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, so our top hacks for this episode are to understand your goals and values so you know where to focus your time and attention. Satisfice, use the Pareto Principle 20% of your effort usually gives you 80% of the result. Accept that most life admin tasks do not need perfection. And finally, consider dialing back the frequency of some of your life admin tasks or really cutting back on how often you do things.
00:28:06
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, 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.
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Speaker
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