Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More

From what I could see, she didn't learn to do less, do better, or live more. All I got was a lot of complaining. And enough about the Flexible Spending Account already. Apparently I am a weird mash-up of the "Admin Denier" and the "Admin Super-Doer." I am "on top of things" while at the same time am convinced that IT'S JUST NOT THAT IMPORTANT.

Some years ago, I heard on the radio a story about some university researchers who had been paid good taxpayer money to identify the perfect amount of butter to put on a slice of toast. Elizabeth's Emens studies into life admin at Colombia University, of which this book is an output, is not far behind on that scale of ridiculousness (in my humble opinion). Proper life admin hacks could be a really productive output, but sadly this book was the equivalent of being asked to write 200 pages on the feelings of an apple seed.

This was a library sale acquisition, and as someone who hates life admin with an absolute passion I thought perhaps there might be some tips to glean. It took me a while to dare to open the front cover, so bad is my life show more admin resistance, but once I committed to the read, well - I committed. Who knew - there could be just the nugget of information I need to free myself from my yearly tax filing panic attack hiding in the next chapter.

So I endured chapters such as 'What is admin?', 'Admin Personalities', 'Who Does Admin', thinking 'wow - this Elizabeth knows how to pad out nothing into something', but like a good girl I persisted into Part II: Admin Surprises, and such nuggets as 'Admin Judgments' and 'Admin to Win Friends and Influence People'. I stayed the course, telling myself I only had to get through a few pages at a time, that it would be worth it for the new me doing my tax return laster in the year. Part III brought 'Admin Futures', when the innovative Emens, who'd run out of padding many, many chapters before, brought us her utopian future of admin ideas. I can't even waste the energy to type the words to tell you what level of utter drivel that was.

But, I'd come this far. Surely the Appendix A of 'Ideas to Try' would bring just the gold I was looking for, and make the previous waste of hours of my life worthwhile....

'My Favourite Ideas to Try - the Urgent List'

Here we go - pens at the ready...

1. Forget the search for a magic tool and embrace a simple to-do list

People, I almost wept.

1 star. I guess the positive is my tax return must surely feel a little smidgen less boring by comparison. show less

I was hoping for more. The author is onto something there. Just went a different direction than I hoped.

Life admin also known as adulting? The author writing about something that is hard to quantify or even identify. Life Admin is the miscellaneous stuff we do in life. Bills, emissions test, dealing with insurance .... it's like the junk drawer of to do lists of life.

I do agree there should be more attempts at quantifying and identifying admin time. Who actually spends the time reading all the fine print from your financial institution and websites? Or trying to navigate cell phone plans. In terms of generation differences, I've spent more time researching for my 4 year old daughter's schooling than my mom did for my entire life time. show more

Admin is a new topic so the author can't find any studies that directly support her ideas. Lots of stories. show less

The principle that many of life's milestones (job-hunting, getting married, moving house) come with overheads attached is well-made.
A current example from my own life just serves to strengthen this premise: our local garden-waste collection service has just moved from a permit-based system to a portal-linked, in-cab technology-driven solution which requires on-line registration, data capture and payment. And all this just to collect garden rubbish!
Notwithstanding the principle outlined in Emens' book, though, many of the examples she quotes are specific to the cultural norms of the United States, so they jar with me. FAFSA (pg. 4), LFOs (pg. 27) and pretax-dollar submissions on healthcare Flexible Spending Accounts (pg. 100) are all show more instances of this cultural specificity.
However, surfacing what will still be for many people long-held suspicions that outsourcing just creates Outsourcer's Admin, is worthwhile in itself. There are useful ideas and tips, too, on how to recognise and deal with this in the context of modern relationships.
The final chapter of the book ("Collective Possibilities") is over-long and a touch rambling, in my view, and not as well-structured as the preceding chapters. However, comprehensive source notes and an index go some way towards mitigating this disappointing ending and provide strong points of reference for committed administrators or, as Emens calls them, "super-doers". show less

Admin, you either love it, hate it, or really hate it. Some of it is important, other elements less so, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away however much you delay it. These things do have to be done though, you need to book appointments, fill out forms, pay bills, buy gifts and arrange things to make our lives a tiny bit easier

Elizabeth Emens was one of those who was becoming swamped with her life admin, running a busy home with two small children and all the things that that entails, was becoming a bit too much for her. So she started to see if there was an easier way, find the best shortcuts and tips from friends who were the model of efficiency in their own household. She collated them all together and has included them in this show more book.

There are some interesting things in here, but no more than I have got from other productivity and self-help books. There is quite a lot of her life story in here but seen from the context of the admin she was having to do. She does make some interesting points and comes up with lots of ideas of ways to improve your own admin workload. Hosting an admin party for close friends was one of the dafter suggestions in here though. Sadly, not sure I got that much from this book, I think I will just stick to my current practice of making a list and working my way through it. show less

A compelling review of an under-appreciated topic. Way more footnotes than your average time management book, but perhaps less practical help than I might have hoped. --A Reluctant Doer

This is obviously the author’s very first book and I hope it will be her last. Content was thin and pretty poor, a few meagre pages on tips to do admin and the rest of rambling about how admin is making life hard to people. The only thing this book is based on is a focus group set up by the author and what came out of it. No expertise claimed by the author beyond having gone through a divorce, and no apparent research on the topic. Crazy that this can get published.