To not understand claims that life admin is 'not a thing'

[LabradorsInThePond]

I keep reading this on MN threads about organisation, time management etc. And that the life admin tasks of renewing insurances and checking mortgage rates can't take up that much time. But I spend a huge amount of time in the throes of life admin. We live a pretty normal, busy family life. I work 4 days in a professional role and can easily spend the 5th day (or at least half of it) in the throes of dreaded life admin.

My list tomorrow extends to twenty three separate items. None of which involve renewing insurances, but they do include buying clothing items (Scout shirt etc.), paying instrument hire, photocopying medical reports for school, booking airport parking, collecting worming tablets, booking a restaurant, buying zoo tickets, arranging a delivery of flowers for mum's birthday, an online grocery shop, buying a thank you gift, arranging a birthday party, booking a roofer, buying new windscreen wipers, emailing the GP, updating kids' Nimbl cards, finding a way to teach DS about dividing decimals, paying various people online etc.

None of these are yearly tasks, and next week there will be another 23 items to complete. It is relentless. DH does most of the house and long-term financial admin and he's also executing his father's too-complicated will, which makes my 23 items look like peanuts.

Do we just have an over-committed life, or does anyone one else find (what others consider non-existent) life admin burdensome and time-consuming? What am I doing wrong here?

I don't believe any task that involves anything online.takes 2 mins. By the time I've logged into the right account and followwd.the instructions etc.
Surely you bookmark the url with a description or download the app with username and password saved or use fingerprint login. If these things are repetitive you should not need instructions to follow.

Its not that I font think its a thing, its that I dont understand why its a THING

or why people act like its the equivalent of a full time job

I take it this was in response to me?

My consultant is an oncologist. I’m very, very grateful that I don’t have to deal with the NHS. He’s a private consultant (paid via my health insurance which my employer pays as part of my benefits package) and I have to say the way the system is operated has taken so much stress out of what is already a very, very stressful time. Everything is done in one place. I had surgery (my tumour was in my neck and huge) and woke up one morning with a severe seroma that really scared me- there was a lot of blood in the fluid. I rang my consultant who told me to come to the hospital oncology ward asap and he had a doctor waiting to meet me when I arrived. From waking up to going home, and all the bits in between (drainage, mainly, plus scans), it was all done in two hours. Exceptional really, and just shows what can be done when processes are well-managed.

I’m coming out the other side now, back at work and feeling 90% better. Best wishes to your husband.

I find life admin incredibly difficult to manage and it all takes up a lot of time and there is constantly stuff that never gets done or gets forgotten. I have ADHD though. I do wonder whether the smugolas on this thread are just people who have exceptionally good executive function ability. Mine is obviously extremely poor but I am sure like anything there are NTs who are not quite as good at it. My DH for instance takes months and months to do the few life admin jobs I task him with. Booking his recent doctors and dentists appts took weeks and lots of prompting from me and he is NT and I have ADHD! He's just not very good at "just fitting that in" to his day.

Am I the only one who actually enjoys this stuff? Nothing like doing a car insurance price comparison for a high reward, low effort ratio. Or renewing a parking permit and booking an MOT- takes no skill at all and yet I really feel I've achieved something 😂

You don't need a prescription for worming tablets.

We just have a "subscribe and save" set up with Amazon - never had an infestation of fleas or worms and we have four animals that get treated with OTC stuff.

I think the problem with it being a 'thing' or not depends on two circumstances. The first is if you have a partner and you both work, it should be a shared task and can usually easily be fitted into general life and not just left to one person. And the second is if you have a partner and dont work/SAHP and you make out its basically an extra whole job when realistically it takes a minimal amount of time that working people seem to manage to fit in quite easily in addition.

But if you do something online regularly, why do you need to faff around logging in and looking at loads of instructions?

I order stock for my business every 4-6 weeks and I pay by bank transfer. I log in using Face ID, go to payees, input the amount and click pay - it doesn't even take two minutes.

Just have your info saved, log in with a click, do what needs doing and log off?

I generally do these on my lunch at work while surfing the web and eating my lunch ...

5 hours is standard. Sometimes it's more. For example, this week I have spent time: making an outfit for my DC 1 to wear to a themed day at nursery, booking a summer holiday + flights, paying in a tax refund cheque at the bank, making a passport application for my DC 2, arranging for my bike to be serviced, buying birthday presents for two birthday parties we are attending this weekend, ordering a cake for my DC 1's upcoming birthday, renewing mine and my husbands life insurance, income protection and critical care cover (took 2 hours to fill in all the forms), doing the online shop, reviewing quotes for an upcoming building project, and booking a dental appointment for myself. I am yet to book an essential GP appointment for my DC 1 because their phone lines are always busy! There is easily 5 hours of life admin right there.

Well making a whole outfit from scratch for a theme day will obviously take longer than average, but none of this stuff is stuff that regularly needs to be done. Booking summer holiday is a yearly occurrence (if you’re lucky). Applying for passports is certainly not a regular chore. Same with birthday cakes and gifts and bike servicing and your husband’s life insurance. Some of this is inventing extra work too - if you find it so arduous you don’t need to make a themed outfit or renew your husband’s life insurance.

And as for doing grocery shopping and booking a dentists appointment - I mean really? We all do that. It’s genuinely not a big job. Every single person grocery shops. As for dentists, I make my next appointment as I’m leaving and then stick the card immediately up on the big calendar.

I said mine and my husband's life insurance. Not just his. Sexist.

It’s not sexist. I was referring to the fact that it’s an extra job you don’t need to do. You could have done your own, you didn’t need to also sort his.

But way to pick up on one random thing rather than the fact that all the chores you mentioned as the totally draining life admin are very irregular jobs that would not take up 5 hours a week.

But none of that needs to take five hours.

You could buy an outfit instead of making one, or just adjust something they already have.
Booking a holiday/flights can be done in front of the TV in the evening, same with the passport application, ordering birthday presents, renewing the life insurance and doing the online shop - yes, it takes time but it doesn't require your undivided attention, you can do it sat in front of TV with a glass of wine and snacks.
You could buy a bog-standard supermarket cake for a 1yo's birthday.
Book the dental appointment when you finish the last one.

I mean - I'm not denying it's work but it really doesn't require five hours of your undivided attention.

Some of this is inventing extra work too - if you find it so arduous you don’t need to make a themed outfit
Most people I know just throw together a themed hat from construction paper or the dress up box.

Life admin 😆. These things are just a part of your life, & you should not class your mother as life admin.

That was me. I wasn’t up for the waste of money and time of making a themed outfit from scratch for a two year old to wear to the nursery school ‘dress as a word’ day. They’d wear their jammies and go as ‘tired.’ If it was world book day it was ‘you wear your captain America outfit and take a comic book, you wear your halloween witch costume and take Meg & Mog.’

Showboating with homemade costumes just isn’t necessary ‘life admin.’

So many people are getting het up over the word "life admin". Admin literally just means organising. So you could call it life organisation if you wanted. But, having been an admin assistant in a past life, I honestly don't see much difference between me at work at a computer ringing up a plumber to come round and fix the staff toilet, and then a few days later sitting down to file and pay his invoice, and doing exactly the same thing at home. It's literally admin.

Not having a go, but a lot of those things involve buying stuff online which doesn’t take long.

instead of adding it to my to do list I would just buy it on my phone there and then (if possible).

reminds me of any infuriating person at work who constantly goes on about their massive to do list. It honestly takes longer for them to add something to their rather than action the thing there and then

Showboating with homemade costumes just isn’t necessary ‘life admin.’

Quite.

It's fine if you want to make work for yourself but don't act like it's something you had to do

making an outfit for my DC 1 to wear to a themed day at nursery, - unnecessary

booking a summer holiday + flights, - once a year job

paying in a tax refund cheque at the bank, 60 seconds on your phone

making a passport application for my DC 2, once every 5 years job

arranging for my bike to be serviced, 5 mins, once a year tops

buying birthday presents for two birthday parties we are attending this weekend, 5 mins max

ordering a cake for my DC 1's upcoming birthday couple of messages to a baker, or pick one up from Tesco's, and even in a family of 6 we only have to do this once every two months!

, renewing mine and my husbands life insurance, income protection and critical care cover (took 2 hours to fill in all the forms), - once a year tops

doing the online shop- max 30 mins if you have lots saved

reviewing quotes for an upcoming building project, an entirely optional extra stressor

and booking a dental appointment for myself. A few minutes on the phone/online

It's a mix at times , if I'm focused I can complete some tasks quickly, others it depends.

I find this really interesting.

I think it's a combination of things. Some people definitely struggle with the organisational aspects of life, be it through being Neuro Divergent, having mental health issues, or raised in a house where being on top of the organisational aspects of life just wasn't modelled to them (my mental health issues definitely caused me to struggle with daily tasks, thankfully I'm doing much better now).

Some people are really organised and on top of everything, maybe because that's just how they naturally are, maybe because they were raised in a house where it was modelled, maybe it doesn't come naturally so they try very hard to make lists and charts and calendars in order to stay on top of things.

Some people struggle due to physical health problems, I know when mine were really bad, getting up to feed the cats, or receive a delivery, or even go for a piss, felt overwhelming and impossible sometimes.

Some just like to be martyrs to being busy. My Dad (great as he is), for example, is like this. We were visiting last weekend, he was getting ready to powerhose the drive. So a cup of tea beforehand while he listed all the steps. 'Well I'll have to walk across the garden to the shed, unlock it, find the hose, take it out of the box it's stored in, carry it down the garden, around the side of the house and through the side gate, lock the gate behind me. Then run an extension lead from the house to plug it in to. Then turn it on, and hose every inch of the drive. Then do it all in reverse', big sigh. A huge list of steps for essentially 'get the hose and use it on the drive'. He seems to think that there is great virtue to being busy, and he'll absolutely turn a regular task into a huge palaver to make sure he's busy enough.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess some people take 'life admin' in their stride, think nothing of it and get it done without a moment of stress. Some struggle with it but manage to get it done. Others find it more difficult for a variety of reasons, and surely that's okay?

Serious question to all these people who claim to be able to buy gifts in 2 minutes flat (we'll say 5 minutes, because that's how long even the quickest online purchase takes, unless it's a repeat order or something. And that's not even counting having to create a new account and enter all your details, go and find your bank card etc. when you buy from a shop you've never bought from before. But I digress) My question is:

Do you always just know immediately what you're going to buy without having to think or search or browse at all? Do you not have to spend ages thinking about what the person might want, browsing for ideas, checking if other websites have anything similar, weighing up the pros and cons of each, calculating if your budget can stretch to the nicer one, sit there agonising over whether the recipient will actually like it, second-guess yourself, ask your partner for their opinion, bookmark it then leave it a day or two, make up your mind, log back into the website, second-guess yourself some more and THEN press "purchase"?