We all hate admin, the tedious but completely necessary tasks that bog us down in the workplace – the last thing we want when we finish at the office is to find a list of personal chores waiting for our attention too! These day-to-day tasks often include paying bills, personal banking, making appointments, managing a mortgage or debt, arranging events and gifts, travel and event planning, home improvements and maintenance, household chores, and shopping.
Managing your life admin relies on the same principles as office admin – it’s all about prioritization and being efficient – you want to get it done in the least time possible so that you can enjoy the other parts of your life without worrying about whether the bills have been paid.
So how can you make your life easier?
- Decide to be productive
Make a conscious effort to get on with the tasks at hand and not procrastinate. If you think of yourself as productive, you are much more likely to be productive. Don’t put off till tomorrow the simple things that you can do today, and don’t let yourself be distracted from the task at hand.
- Have a system
Everyone has their own way of doing things, some people prefer a physical folder or tray for admin/bills/correspondence/tickets, whilst others prefer to use email or hard drive folders and apps to keep organised. Having a system makes things a lot simpler, and if you can keep it online and accessible form your smartphone, even better! Today there are apps for everything, from keeping track of your bills to what your kids are doing, and these can all help make your life simpler, some of our favourites include:
- My Receipt, which organizes your receipts into categories.
- Bills Guardian, which sends reminders to pay bills before they are due.
- Time Table, which keeps track of your kid’s exams, sports days, music days, etc.
- Prioritise
When it comes to managing life admin, you should take a long and hard look at yourself and your lifestyle and identify exactly what the most important aspects of it are at the current moment. Once you identify the most important things in your life, you can make a plan to execute and take care of them in a controlled fashion. Make a list of the tasks to be completed and split them into categories such as:
- Urgent – to be done today
- Easy – can be completed quickly, although may not be urgent
- Complex but important – will take some time, but a priority
- Not urgent – long term tasks that can take lower priority
Splitting the tasks helps you to focus on what’s important rather than just doing the quick and easy ones in order to tick something off the list!
- Dedicate time
Make life admin a part of your daily schedule and try to do a different piece of admin every day. Rather than letting your to-do list to build up, incorporate life admin into your day and you’ll soon see it will help you accomplish your tasks bit by bit.
- Outsource and delegate
Of course we were going to recommend this as an option! Using an outsourced PA service such as ourselves can help not only with workload but also all of those pieces of life admin. Need to get all the bills paid, request a new chequebook or credit card, renew your insurance or car registration, book in a car service, arrange a birthday party, collect some mail or the dry cleaning, get those shoes re-heeled, order shopping online, research and make travel or social event arrangements, or even go out and buy gifts? We can manage any of these requests quickly and easily. Overwhelmed by a personal email inbox and daily newsletters? We can take care of that for you and sort it all into folders and unsubscribe from any unnecessary mailing lists, so that all you need to do is go into the relevant folders – making the task so much less of a burden.
Life admin really need not be something that weighs you down and stresses you out in your personal time, with a little bit of work now, you can ensure that everything is managed effectively and that you really do get to make the most of your life. If you’re interested in trying out our service and hearing what we can do for you, please do give us a call.