Life Admin

How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More

By: Elizabeth F. Emens

Narrated by: Elizabeth F. Emens

Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Listening to this audiobook should be at the top of your To Do list. Life Admin will give you many hours of your life back.

Every day an unseen form of labor creeps into our lives - stealing precious moments of free time, placing a strain on our schedules and our relationships, and earning neither appreciation nor compensation in return. This labor is life admin: the kind of secretarial and managerial work necessary to run a life and a household.

Elizabeth Emens was a working mother with two young children, swamped like so many of us, when she realized that this invisible labor was consuming her. Desperate to survive and to help others along the way, she conducted interviews and focus groups to gather favorite tips and tricks, admin confessions, and the secrets of admin-happy households.

Life Admin tackles the problem of admin in all its forms, from everyday tasks like scheduling doctors appointments and paying bills, to life-cycle events like planning a wedding, a birth, a funeral. Emens explores how this labor is created, how it affects our lives, and how we might avoid, reduce, and redistribute admin whenever possible - as individuals and as a society.

Life Admin is the book that will teach us all how to do less of it, and to do it better.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2018 Elizabeth F. Emens (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

No answers found here.

Author's narration style dull and lifeless. Book offered no tactics, mostly just talked ABOUT the problem of life admin.

A marvel!

This book is a marvel. It beautifully blends life-changing conceptual insights with life-changing practical strategies. I understand my life better after reading it, and I have concrete plans on how to tackle previously unseen, unnamed, and under-appreciated problems. As one person quoted by the author says, it’s like reading a book about air—but only if air hadn’t been discovered yet! Admin is all around us. It pervades our lives. Understanding that has already changed my marriage, and my professional relationships. I've recommended it to many friends and family, and everyone loves it—especially the Super-Doers and the Admin Avoiders!

More about types of life admin than actions

Life admin are the chores that are a hassle to do, like finding a school for a child, filing an insurance claim, renewing a license, canceling a membership, and disputing a charge. The thought of life admin fills many people with dread. There are avoiders, those who put off life admin as long as possible. There are deniers, those who think life admin are dumb and shouldn't be done. This book is mostly about the types of life admin, how the work is distributed (usually more for the woman), and how life admin creeps in (one spouse took over when the other spouse was doing it wrong or kept forgetting to do it). There are some good ideas for handling life admin, such as instead of trying to coordinate a play date, one mother texted a group of mothers the time when she was going with her child to the park. No response was needed. Few other mothers showed up with their children and it became an instant play date. Another idea is to set a date for life admin tasks (like paying the bills) and video call a friend so you two can do those tasks and chat at the same time. Or try to eliminate life admin entirely, like setting up auto payments, paying someone else to do them, and considering how purchasing things might add admin work (is it assembled or not? does it come with batteries?).

This reluctant doer found "Life Admin" fascinating

A super doer (someone who has no trouble getting things done, and done well) may read this book and find simply validation, or he/she may feel it's a waste of time to read it at all. For everyone else, Emens provides a thorough analysis of how life admin affects and often overwhelms most of us (some more than others). I can see why some reviewers would find such a "scholarly" approach unnecessary and prefer a list of tips and tricks. In her defense, Emens does provide many useful suggestions and examples throughout the book, and there are several lists of strategies and things to try at the end of the book. However, I found her in-depth analysis helped me gain a deeper understanding of my particular mindset, and what strategies I may benefit from the most (for example, borrowing strategies from other admin personalities, or reflecting on the goal/value/purpose/opportunity of the admin task at hand to lessen the mental burden). Emens tone is authoritative yet humorous, making this read both insightful and light. I highly recommend it. In the end, however, one has to do the work, perhaps starting with small, manageable, and sustainable changes to get on the road to precrastination/procrastination recovery.

No need to read it, title says it

Maybe I’m off here, but I’m assuming most people are familiar with Life admin. I was hoping for tips/tricks on how to be better at it, this book is more just an academic discussion that confirms that it exists, and whether you’re the type to deal with it or not. Didn’t take anything away from it so probably wouldn’t recommend it to friends

Marie Kondo your time for beginners

If you’ve already thought about managing and minimizing makework in your life, you won’t find too much new here. That said, most don’t do this enough.

If removing extra crap from your calendar is new to you, this is a good book. If not, it’s largely not useful to you.

False Advertising

This book claims to be about “Life Admin” and provide useful insights on that topic. However, it focuses more on bashing men than suggesting improved administrative workflow methods.