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Discover the power of a Life Admin Day! By dedicating time to organize tasks, declutter your space, and prioritize goals, you’ll boost productivity and create a more efficient lifestyle. Embrace the transformative impact of this intentional day for lasting positive change.
I have loved a so called “Life Admin Day” since the moment I started frequently doing them. You might’ve heard from a ‘Life Admin’ day before, but maybe you don’t exactly know what it means, or maybe you are looking for a productive way to get those life admin tasks done.
Either way, I’m positive you’ll find the answers you’re looking for in this post. In this post, I’ll explain what a Life Admin Day is and what mine looks like. Join me in getting my life together!
What Is A Life Admin Day?
What is life admin exactly? Elizabeth Emens wrote the book The Art Of Life Admin, and she explains life admin as the following: “Life admin is all the office-type work that fills our minds and fills our time on a daily basis, and around big life events. So it’s both the kind of work that secretaries or admins do – faxing and calendaring and filling out paperwork – and it’s the kind of work that managers do – delegating and deciding and then keeping track of all the things that need doing.”
The life admin meaning described by the dictionary is the following:
Life admin refers to one’s personal day-to-day chores that are of an administrative nature. This includes tasks such as personal banking, making appointments, paying your bills, and responding to personal emails.
Basically, life admin tasks are, most of the time, personal admin or things you keep procrastinating on. It’s super easy to shove these tasks away because “you’re not feeling it today” or because “I’ll do it later.” I think you know what I mean, lol. We just don’t like these tasks, but either way, they have to be done.
This is where a “Life Admin Day” comes in handy. The life admin day meaning is actually to block a full day to do all of the things you need to do, want to do, things you were procrastinating on, etc.
But just getting started on the tasks you’ve been avoiding for a while can be a struggle. Also, not every person is the same. It’s important to reflect on which type of ‘Life Adminner’ you are in order to get yourself motivated.
What Type Of Life Adminner Are You?
According to Elizabeth Emens, there are four types of Life Adminners. “The ‘super-doer’, ‘reluctant-doer’, ‘admin avoider’ and ‘admin denier’,” she explains. “The idea is that the first two, the super-doer and the reluctant-doer are basically doing it or getting it done, and the last two, the admin avoider and the admin denier, are mostly not getting it done, and the difference is how they feel about it.”
Perhaps the names of these types resonate for you or someone came to mind when reading this. Either way, it might be very interesting to read more about these personality types reflect on which type you are.
The basic differences among the four personalities involve variations of action and feeling: whether a person’s basic orientation is toward getting admin done or not getting it done (the action element) and how a person feels about the state of admin in her life (the feeling element).
– Article by Girlboss.
I won’t be going into these four types too deep. If you would like to read more about them, I recommend reading The Art Of Life Admin. Here’s a quick description of all four types.
Super Doer
The Super Doer is on top of admin. She is the Wonder Woman who promptly supplies recommendations of every kind to her family and many friends (and even strangers), plans gatherings and trips for everyone, and remembers (or has a system for remembering) birthdays, even while successfully managing her demanding job or household or both.
Reluctant Doer
The Reluctant Doer feels that the to-do list is endless—and that she is always several steps behind. No major disasters befall her or her family through admin failures.
The important stuff generally gets done—she is a Doer, after all—but sometimes it’s late, and often it’s last-minute.
Admin Avoider
The Avoider is trying to escape admin. She leaves emails unanswered and regular mail unopened. She has faced late fees and worse due to her admin avoidance. She generally thinks of this “stuff” as something she’s bad at.
Admin Denier
The Admin Denier, by contrast, doesn’t think there’s a problem. The Denier is the free spirit who racks up credit-card debt.
The Denier is also a successful professional who has always had someone—an assistant, a parent, a spouse—who takes care of all her admin, so she never has to see it or even really know about most of it.
Now that we know which type of Life Adminner we are, it’s time to actually start with a Life Admin Day. A full day for life admin tasks will help avoiders and super-doers.
If you block a full day the avoiders can’t avoid anymore, and the super-doers don’t have to spend every evening doing life admin tasks immediately.
Also, be prepared to change. You might be one ‘type’, but that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to – or won’t be forced to (let’s face it, the Admin Denier could come across something like this) – change to another. It’s okay to change, and it can be something you embrace over time.
What To Do On A Life Admin Day?
I mean, it’s obvious that you’ll do life admin tasks on this day, but the easiest way to start this day is to start off with a brain dump and then categorize everything. My example for these categories is from muchelleb on YouTube. You’ll see that you probably have at least these three main categories:
- Appointments: how’s your car doing? Do you need to see a doctor, dentist, or psychologist? When was your last nail/hair/brows appointment? Do you need to plan a new appointment any time soon?
- Organizing: how is your desk looking? Do you need to declutter/organize? Do you have enough stationery? Are there any things you need?
- Upcoming events: do you have any events coming up? Do you need to start planning for them? Are there any emails you still need to reply to?
Don’t be afraid to put literally everything that crosses your mind on (digital) paper while doing a brain dump. You want to have all the tasks that you have been procrastinating on in one place so you can start organizing from there and actually getting things done.
It’s totally fine if you won’t be able to do all the tasks in one day, though, but be aware of planning another life admin day if you need it.
Once you’ve done a brain dump of all the life admin tasks and organized them into categories, it’s time to take action. I would recommend doing the easiest/quickest things first since that’ll make you feel satisfied and more motivated to continue. If you need some extra motivation, you can set a timer and try to complete one category within the time frame you gave yourself.
How My Life Admin Day Looks Like (Life Admin Examples)
So, I started off with a brain dump, just writing down everything that made me feel anxious. After that, I categorized them, and my list looked like this:
Appointments
So, after I made my list, I realized I had to make many appointments. I decided to take time for that, sit down, and arrange all these appointments. I haven’t been to the hairdresser for over a year now, and I really need a haircut, so thankfully, I planned an appointment.
Moreover, I really wanted to get my nails done for the first time ever, and I had to make an appointment for that as well. Since it’s my first time, I keep postponing it. I finally found a cute nail salon and booked my appointment.
My dentist and optician appointments both needed to be rearranged, so I had to call both of them to get that done. These calls went pretty quickly, and I shouldn’t have procrastinated on these tasks.
Organizing
This list has some tasks which I can’t do immediately or that won’t be done in a day. But that’s okay. I’m going to start with the little tasks I can do right now.
Normally, I’m very organized regarding my mailbox, but during my Christmas break, I got some new emails that I needed to read and answer. Thankfully, it’s not a lot, so I went through this pretty quickly. Both my school and private mailboxes are empty!
Then I decided to clean things up a little bit, so I started deleting emails because I’m a person who always stores everything but never throws something away, haha. It was time to get rid of some old emails. I’m only doing this for my private emails since I don’t want to throw something away from my school mailbox yet.
It’s Dutch, I’m sorry, but it says it’s clearing the inbox! I had 2.663 sent emails from years and years, so it was time to get rid of them. I did this with several folders.
Moreover, I paid my dad the money back I had borrowed from him. I also finished decluttering my Dropbox and Drive! I had so many folders, but it’s looking way better now. And I started clearing out WhatsApp, photos, and apps. Then I also got my storage boxes, so I’m now able to start organizing my drawers, decluttering paperwork, etc.
Upcoming Events
This month, I have many events coming which I can’t do anything about yet. I just have to wait a little while until I can start working on that.
At least I can schedule for January. Since my phone is connected to my MacBook, I can easily print my agenda with every deadline, meeting, appointment, etc. This is to have a good overview of the upcoming month.
This is what my planning looks like for the upcoming month. It kinda looks like a very uneventful month, but I can tell you it’s not haha. I don’t write to-dos in my agenda, so the days that look free aren’t really free days. But at least I have a very good overview of all my meetings and appointments this month!
Also, I wrote some deadlines on my agenda. Since my minor is very varied, I could end up with even more meetings, deadlines, or appointments, but I’ll print a new one if I need to.
Result
So this is how my list looks after just one day. As you can see it’s definitely not done yet, but I’m quite happy with all the things I already did!
All the appointments I really had to make were done, which I’m very satisfied with. Clearing out my phone photos + apps and clearing out my paperwork are things I already started with but couldn’t finish yet.
These two tasks are going to be done very soon! For all the other tasks, I’m going to do another Life Admin Day very soon. Click here to read more on productivity.
