Transcript
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Speaker: This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools that tackle your life admin more efficiently to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony. I'm Dunera Roberts, an operations manager whose comparison shopped every household bill, some more than once, during my hours of power in the very long, long Melbourne lockdowns. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer
Speaker: who loves asking Siri to list my 10 -minute time killers each morning. This episode will help you think about how much time you need for Life Admin in a whole new way. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. Before we jump into today's topic, we wanted to say thank you to our latest reviewers, in particular, March Dee, who said,
Speaker: Essential listening. Thank you for this wonderful podcast. I was feeling overwhelmed with managing my time, carrying the cognitive load of work, family and getting things done. I love your practical real world suggestions. Thank you so much, Marge. We used to be incredibly overwhelmed with all this stuff too. So we hear you and basically that's how this whole paper started. So thank you for letting us know.
Speaker: Yeah, we are so passionate about freeing people from the tedium of Life Admin. So if you take away some helpful hints today, please pay it forward and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts so others can find these useful resources too. So earlier this year, we surveyed our community to understand how they approach their Life Admin and their pain points and its impact on their careers. We found some really interesting results which triggered the idea for this episode.
Speaker: Because when it came to improving their approach to life admin, it was the most important for people to find ways to spend less time on it. Peace of mind was a close second, but it was all about the fact that they wanted to free up time. 40 % felt that having time to do life admin was the biggest obstacle to getting life admin under control, closely followed by motivation.
Speaker: Yeah, we saw some really interesting stats because only 5 % of the respondents to our survey thought that knowing when to do life admin was an issue. Most people believe they just need more time or more motivation to get on top of it. But it's actually what we know is it's really having the right habits, the right tools and processes.
Speaker: So 60 % of the people in the survey do their life admin at random. So only 4 % had like a fixed time of the week that they try and handle their life admin. So no wonder that people never seem to get on top of it. Most people really often do it just to prevent a crisis or sometimes people even take sick leave or annual leave to do life admin. We found one third of people take time off work to get things sorted because they leave things to the last minute.
Speaker: Yeah, so this is a big problem with a kind of quandary in the middle. We've got people saying they feel like they don't have time to do it and all the while they're treating it like something that can actually be achieved in magic time. So this is disconnect in how long people think they need to get it done and the fact that they don't schedule time to address it.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that that was definitely my situation before we started looking at this area. So in this episode, we're going to talk about categorizing your life admin tasks by the time they will take to do. Three buckets of life admin tasks, two minute, two easy tasks, 10 minute time killers and the magical hour of power. And we're also going to talk about how a regular monthly momentum meeting
Speaker: can be a game changer in terms of sharing the life admin load in your household. And the momentum meeting was something that kind of developed as we were writing the book. So we'll get into that in a moment. And what I wanted to mention was a come to Jesus moment that everyone needs to have to get their head around why life admin might be out of control for them. And that is to accept that you need to schedule some regular time in your calendar to get some of the important chunky stuff done.
Speaker: It can't all be squeezed in in some magic moment that's going to miraculously appear. You actually need to dedicate time to this. And while you might sigh with resignation about putting such a boring recurring meeting into your calendar, you actually get to achieve peace of mind because you know, there's a time set aside where you can deal with this stuff. So instead of wondering, when am I going to get to it? When am I going to get to it? I've got to get it done.
Speaker: You will know, all right, on Saturday morning or Tuesday night or Wednesday lunchtime, that is my time. I can sit down and I can actually address it. You can stop worrying about how you're going to get it all done. There's an analogy that's used in time management around having a jar that represents your time. In this analogy, it talks about putting rocks and pebbles and sand into this jar and getting it all to fit.
Speaker: And the idea is that the rocks are the big tasks that you need to do. The pebbles are the smaller task and the sand is just, you know, little bits and pieces. And when you look at this pile of rocks and pebbles and sand and think, how can I possibly put this in the jar? It's not going to fit.
Speaker: You might try and put all the, you layer them on top of the other and you're like, it doesn't actually fit in the jar. And the wisdom goes that, you know, what you do is you put in the rocks, you put in the major things, the important things first, and you, literally the pebbles on top and the pebbles will slot around the rocks. And then you put the sand in last and the sand just sort of fills up any of the extra space in the jar and you can actually get everything to fit.
Speaker: So it's about looking at what needs to go into the jar, thinking about a sequence that makes sense, and it's actually going to allow you to accommodate all the things you have to get done. And when you think about how this aligns with life admin, you've got your rocks, which are basically your chunky tasks where you're going to need an hour of power to get them done. You've got your pebbles, which are the 10 minute time killer activities that can fit around and be a bit more flexible with.
Speaker: And then you've got your SAM, just all the little two minutes, two easy tasks that you can use in a more flexible, spontaneous way to make the most of your time.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think often what people do with life admin is they focus a lot of their effort on those kind of sand tasks, the little bits and pieces. And so that kind of fills up their container too much. And so they often don't get to those big chunky tasks, like getting your wheels sorted or getting digital photos sorted. Or they, they pile the two minute tasks. They pile the sand. Whereas you should deal with the sand as it comes along. And then you actually end up with a sand dune.
Speaker: So you've got, you know, a bazillion, two minute, two easy tasks that you could have knocked over in the moment and now become a Sanji. This is going to get messy with this metaphor. Yeah, I think maybe we've filled the jar too much.
Speaker: As Mia had mentioned, we wanted to talk about those sort of three groups of tasks. So we consider those rocks, the big, meaty tasks, hours of power, the 10 minute tasks, pebbles, and two minute to easy tasks, the sand. So should we actually start off with those two minute to easy tasks and tell us what you think fits into that category and how you go about approaching them? And this is the thing, when a task comes your way, the first
Speaker: Thought needs to be, all right, is this a two minutes too easy? Is this one of those fast, easy things that can be done as soon as it's popped up on my radar? And it might be, I've opened an email and there's a bill, I need to pay it. And basically if you open up your banking app and deal with it right then and there, it's done, it's gone, it's off your to -do list. And it has literally taken you two minutes and you never have to think about it again. You can, you know, upload the bill, delete the email, move on.
Speaker: So if it's one of those kinds of tasks, don't add it to a list. Don't stop pilot for later. Just get it done right there and then.
Speaker: I think one of the traps that people often fall into, particularly when it comes to emails, is that they open their email even when they don't have two minutes and they might open 10 emails in the two minutes and then all of them kind of bank up and create this mayhem. I think the really important thing is don't even open your email unless you've got two minutes to action the task that sits there. Wait till the time when you've got
Speaker: you know, two or five minutes and knock off a couple of emails straight away. You don't be tempted to open them when you've got a five second break between tasks. Yeah. There's no easier way to ratchet up your anxiety and to jump into your inbox, scan a bunch of things, realize you've got a whole bunch of things to do and not have time to do them and close it. And then think about that for the next, you know, in the back of your mind for the next four hours.
Speaker: Donate it. I just, I'm sort of, I look at my email at the start of the day. I look at it around lunchtime. I look over the end.
Speaker: because I know I'll have a little window there where I can knock over some of those two minutes too easy tasks. So if it's not a two minute too easy task, it might be what we call a 10 minute time killer. So this is a category of tasks that can be done in idle time. So it's a little bit longer than a two minute too easy task. It might be something like filling out a form. It might even be doing some quick online shopping. You don't really need to schedule these tasks. They're often not super urgent.
Speaker: but you really do need to be confident that you know when you're going to get them done. And you also need to have a system to know what those tasks are. So for me, I have a to -do list that's called family admin to -do list that is in my to -do list app. And I add anything in there that might come in by email or that pops into my mind that I know is going to take
Speaker: you know, around 10 minutes to get done. And I always consult it when I'm, you know, watching something boring on TV, or if I wasn't in lockdown, if I was in the car waiting to pick someone up, or I must admit that I have been doing it a little bit during recent working from home times. I'll sometimes attack that list during the odd boring Zoom meetings. So those are the, when I attack those tasks. Yeah. I like, you know, that point, Diana, that
Speaker: You need to think upfront about when is the white space in my day? When are those little downtime moments in between other things where I could just knock off one of these tasks? So it's not like it's dedicated, you know, you're not thinking it'll happen when it happens, I'll find a time. You're like, all right, I specifically know I'm always going to have a gap between when I have to
Speaker: drop my kid here and wait for the pickup for the next kid there. Or I definitely know that there'll be a 30 minute window between these two things and I can get it done. For me, I do it when my kids have screen time because it's usually for me, it's usually buying something or downloading something or messaging someone. It usually involves a screen of some kind. So I jump on and do it when my kids are on screen time. So we're modeling good screen time. My list is literally
Speaker: on my phone in the Reminders List app and it's just called Ten Minute Time Killers.
Speaker: And I think for a lot of people that can be a time when you often turn to social media. So I think it's very easy, particularly if you're waiting for something, I'll just have a quick scroll. And that doesn't really fill up your cup of life. So if you can actually knock something off your to -do list during that time, you can actually really be bored, get a little bit of a rush from ticking that item off. So I really recommend giving it a go if usual habit is to turn to Insta or Facebook. Yeah.
Speaker: And then the final big daddy of them all is the hour of power. And this is time committed to substantial to do list tasks where you really need to sit down, you need to concentrate, you might need to analyze something or compare things. So it could be changing electricity provider or planning a birthday party or reviewing your super. This deserves a recurring time slot in your calendar.
Speaker: where you know you're going to be able to work through these chunky tasks. And people give these times fun names. What do you call it? At the moment, it's called the Life Admin Blitz. Oh, Blitz. Blitz. I have set me up Sunday. I do mine in Sunday morning in bed.
Speaker: I do it fortnightly and I get up, I'll go and grab my laptop and I'll sit in bed and I'll just, you know, knock over whatever my hour of power thing needs to be. And people call it, you know, Monday Magic Time or giving it a little name helps put you in the right mindset. And you've got to think about what else do you need in your environment?
Speaker: to make this time tolerable. You know, is it a glass of wine? What can you do to set up your environment so that you'll comfortably sit down and dedicate yourself to this task for an hour? I've been in a little reward at the end of it. Yeah. So when we first started, I definitely had an hour of power life admin blitz once a week.
Speaker: I used to have it on a Sunday morning. And then over time, I actually found that I was so on top of my life admin, I didn't need to have it every week. I actually changed it to once a month. But during lockdown, I've changed it back to once a week. I started doing it on Saturdays to try and give my weekend some structure. And I have actually comparison shopped everything, like more than once something. So I guess it's made me feel like at least every weekend of lockdown, I've achieved something. And that's really helped with my
Speaker: mental health, I think, just that feeling of achievement every weekend. I have two on my Hour of Power list at the moment. One of them's an advanced care directive. So, you know, that'll be fun. But it's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. And yeah, and I've got the other thing on there is to buy a rug for the kids' bedroom. So both of those things, I'll literally sit on my laptop in bed, Microsoft a cup of tea,
Speaker: sort them out. Yeah, I've got a few things planned as well, but I'm actually starting optimistically to book some holidays for next year. So I'm going to book a holiday for the June school holidays. It's my hour of power this weekend. So that feels like something to look forward to. So they'll boy me with some positivity. Fingers crossed. So when we were writing the book, which comes out in January next year, we will be able to get into the detail of this.
Speaker: We talked about the fact that when you're starting to overhaul your life admin, you need to do things like set up a password manager, decide what apps you're going to use for to -do lists. You're going to think about digital calendars. You're going to think about budgets. And a lot of this takes time. So we started to think about, well, maybe it makes sense to use those initial hours of power.
Speaker: to do some of these enabling tasks before you can get onto sorting all the other stuff out. And we landed on this idea of a monthly momentum meeting. Yeah, so I think this idea of the monthly momentum meeting is really a time to review everything and make sure that everything's working properly, that your schedule is sorted, your to -do lists are in line with your goals and values, and just overall keep your life admin humming.
Speaker: We borrowed some of the concept that Dave Allen has. He calls it a weekly review around getting clear, getting current and getting creative. And the other thing that we really think you can use a monthly momentum for is to get collaborative. So it's really about pulling out your calendar, your to -do lists, any lurking paperwork or email.
Speaker: Getting clear that you've got everything on your to -do list that needs to be there. Knock things off that are no longer important to you. Check that your schedule's up to date and really tackle any other tasks you haven't managed to get to. And really agree with your partner, if you've got one, who's doing what so that you make sure that you're not the only one sorting the life admin in your household. So Dave Allen is a productivity expert who wrote Getting Things Done and he's developed a whole system.
Speaker: around maximising your productivity. It makes sense really to think that you need to dedicate some time to just reviewing and getting some perspective on, you know, what have you set for yourself? Is it all still relevant? And have I forgotten anything? Is it current? And I love our thoughts of getting collaborative because it's a massive reason why people think they need more time and the time is a big obstacle for life admin because they're doing it all themselves.
Speaker: And if you can get children, partners, whoever else on board, then it's going to free up some of your bandwidth.
Speaker: Yeah, so we've been doing it for a while and I guess it's morphed over time as we've improved things because we've been having a family meeting for a long time, which more talked about other masses in the household harmony, a little bit of chores and pocket money and things like that. But now we really have enhanced it and we do it every week, actually. So for us, our momentum meeting isn't a monthly thing, it's a weekly thing.
Speaker: And my husband and I, we sit down with wine or a cup of tea, depending on how the weekend rolled and whether we need one or the other. Our momentum meeting is really a focus on schedule. And particularly while we've been homeschooling, it's been talking about that juggle of who's going to do what, who's going to be available for the kids in certain days and certain times of the day. But we always check out our family admin to -do list. It's like a regular feature just to see
Speaker: It's a good time for us both to look over what's on there, make sure that what's on there still needs to be done, and also make sure it's clear who's doing what and what the deadlines are so that nothing slips through the cracks.
Speaker: Mm, that sounds really thorough. Yeah, and it doesn't actually take very long. So I think it can sound kind of onerous, but if your calendar's reasonably up to date and your to -do list is reasonably up to date, it doesn't need to take a long time, but it's just such a good habit to get into. And to pair it with something like, you know, a glass of wine or a cup of nice herbal tea, it's kind of like a comforting end. So it's really great sort of finishing off the week and thinking about the week ahead. It feels like a really good ritual to have. Yeah.
Speaker: I think the two key words you mentioned there is habit and ritual. And the idea is that it's the consistency that makes all the overwhelm go away. When you come at this thing methodically each week and you just have this rhythm set, then you can get a lot done. If you leave it to crisis or if you leave it for a few weeks or a few months and you're like, oh my God, things are under control. We need to sit down and talk through stuff. Then you're coming at it from this place of overwhelm and friction and hassle.
Speaker: approach to just generally chipping away at it week on week off. Yeah and for us sometimes there's things for us to chat through like I might have gone away and done some research or my husband might have so at the moment we're actually both looking at I've been looking at solar panels and he's been looking at us buying a new car so we also know that that means that on Sunday night we've got this
Speaker: predetermined time, which is a great time to us to talk about that and to make decisions rather than having to find another time. We know when is going to be a good time. It's going to be Sunday night. We know we'll be able to make those decisions together. And then that will give us the week ahead to move forward on any decisions that was made. Does that stop the nagging of when are you going to look at this? When are you going to do that?
Speaker: does because I think the to -do list does that because it sits there on the to -do list. And then once a week you get that gentle nudge, because it might not be something that's super urgent. Maybe it's take something to the dry cleaner or something that doesn't need to happen this week. But having that on that to -do list and every week we're going to sit there together and look at it. And if his name's assigned to it and the due date was
Speaker: three weeks ago, it's just a really easy way of giving accountability to both of us that these things, we agreed to take them on. We put our names against them on the to -do list and they've been, you know, sitting there for some weeks. Do we need to cross it off? Or do we just actually need to take a bit of responsibility and do what we said we were going to do to help out our whole household? Yeah. So if you have a whole bunch of tasks that you need to get done, the first step is really to think about how much time do I need for each of these tasks?
Speaker: Is it an hour of power that I can tackle methodically in my allotted time? Is it a 10 minute time killer that I can pair with waiting for something or in between something else? Or have I actually let a whole bunch of two minute, two easy tasks piled up? And in the future, knowing that you'll do them as soon as they land in your lap, it might need an hour of power or a little dedicated slot to just clear them all and change your habit going forward.
Speaker: I do think that this way of approaching life admin, this really deliberate way of thinking about when you're going to do what sort of tasks can really change your life. It can really take that sort of weight off your mind because it puts some structure around things. It makes it easier to set up systems to know when you're going to do what and it really can streamline your life. So we hope these hacks will make you stop and pause and think about how much time you need to do the life admin tasks in your life.
Speaker: Are they two minutes too easy tasks that can be done as soon as they arrive? Are they 10 minute time killer lasts which you can pop on your to -do list? Or are they hour of power tasks where you're going to schedule in a slot each week and maybe dedicate a momentum meeting to get your life admin humming? Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks .com. And if you're a fan,
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