Life Kit - From bills to appointments, here's how to tackle the homework of adulthood

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Life seems full of ever-increasing piles of paperwork — bills to pay, appointments to make, forms to sign, carpools to organize. Here's how to conquer the responsibilities on your to-do list so you can get back to your life. (This episode originally ran in September 2019.)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Chris Arnold. I cover personal finance and consumer protection for NPR, and I host Life Kit podcasts that tackle all sorts of financial questions, like what's the best way to start budgeting, or how should we think about whether to rent or to buy a home, or I know I need to start saving for my kid's college, but where do I even start? You know, it's like increasingly our lives, we have all this stuff to address, the paperwork, the call centers, all this crap we don't want to deal with. That's not our job, right? Nobody's paying us to do this, but it feels like a job.

It feels almost like adults' homework. But it's homework that nobody talks about. It really is striking how it's invisible. We don't generally see it as labor. That's Elizabeth Emmons. She's a Columbia law professor, and she actually wrote a whole book on this concept, which she calls Life Admin. Here's her definition. Life Admin is all the invisible office work that steals our time. It's the kind of work that managers and secretaries get paid in an office to do, but that we all do invisibly and for free in our own lives. Things like getting your car inspected, organizing your kids' after-school schedules and their carpools, taking your computer to be fixed when it breaks. So it's a whole range of stuff that touches all areas of our lives.

And there are so many ways that our society is structured not to support us in dealing with this. And often at our most challenging life moments, that's when we most need help with this. And instead, we're slammed with the worst of it. It's also true that we don't help people on the brink of adulthood or in the transition to adulthood with learning how to deal with this aspect of life. You know, we need admin ed in schools. Okay, so there's no life admin class in school yet, but we are going to school you on how to approach this life admin stuff. Elizabeth has a ton of strategies on how to conquer all the things that have been hanging out on your to-do list for who knows how long. We called up Elizabeth Emmons to talk about life admin for a LifeKit episode on student loan debt

and how to repay it. And this is a process which, in addition to being, of course, wildly expensive and difficult for a lot of people, it's also notorious for being super labor intensive. I mean, there's so many ways to make mistakes. There's paperwork you really have to stay on top of and filling it out the right way and on time is really, really crucial. And you can hear that episode at npr.org slash life kit. Anyway, I asked Elizabeth how she became such an expert on this topic. Well, I was an inadvertent expert on it. I didn't choose this path at all, but there was a point in my own life after my second child was born where I realized that I was completely overwhelmed by a kind of labor I hadn't really anticipated as part

of the fun or the challenges of parenting. And so I got interested in this invisible labor, having first thought it was just my problem and then realizing it seemed to be everybody else's problem, too. And so I wrote an academic article. That's what I tend to do. But as I started to present that article around the country to other law professors, the response was so intense. People were saying, you've seen into our minds and our marriages, how did you do that? And people seem to be finding real relief from the naming of it and the seeing it. And so I decided I wanted to do interviews to learn more about it and brainstorming sessions and then to make it a book that made it visible to people beyond just other academics. You know, is it

important to just recognize, look, this is work? I mean, you don't go to your office to do it, but it's work. And is it important to sort of name it that and, you know, just accept that there's a certain amount of this stuff we're going to have to deal with in life? Absolutely. The first step is to make it visible, to see it, to recognize that it counts for something. Most of us think we can sort of manage it by taking a few texts or emails on the side while we're doing other things. But especially any kind of sustained project takes real time and deserves credit. A lot of us humans are not so good at staying on top of the paperwork. That's not a part of our regular jobs. Why are human beings, it seems like so many of us are just not good at this

paperwork stuff and this life admin stuff. Yeah, it's really interesting. One of the most interesting things I saw in my interviews on Life Admin was how different our personalities are around admin. So for some people, it really is just like the air that they breathe. But for many, many people, this is an area of real struggle and real suffering. And so the starting point for all this after you name it and see it is to actually know yourself, to know your own admin personality, because that's the only way you'll know what strategies will actually work for you. Sometimes when people just hear the personalities, then it's obvious to them where they fit in the personalities. So there's the superdoer,

the reluctant doer, the admin avoider, and the admin denier. So the superdoer is doing it and feeling pretty good about it. The reluctant doer is doing it but really wishes they didn't have to. That's my usual port of call. The admin avoider is not doing it and feeling bad about it, feeling guilty to whoever is doing it or feeling embarrassed or I even heard a big word like shame from some of my interviewees about falling behind and the late fees and the consequences. And then the admin denier's not doing it, but actually feeling pretty good about that. The denier's generally been lucky enough

to have somebody else to do it for them. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes that works for people if they have other people around them to pick up the pieces. And sometimes it catches up with them. But so the question that I asked, which of the following statements sounds most like you

in relation to household bills? A, I have a good method for paying my bills so they never weigh on me. Okay, that's the super doer. B, I pay my bills on time, but I wish I didn't have to deal with them. That's a reluctant doer. C, my bills pile up and eventually guilt or late fees force me to deal with them or someone else gets to them before I do. Admin avoider. And D, I don't seem to pay many bills. Admin denier. I'm trying to figure out where I fit in. And I think maybe I'm a reluctant doer. But like for me, mail piles up and piles up.

And then it gets to be like this embarrassing pile of mail. And I'm like, oh, geez, OK, I really spent three hours on a Saturday and I'll hate it. But I will go through and deal with it. And usually there's no like catastrophe because I put it off. So it's not like I'm running up horrible late fees or anything like that. But I just don't like it. And I still feel like I have a good system. It's like, you know, watching the wicker basket full of mail spill over onto furniture.

And then the floor is not the best system that I have for myself here. I also have a mail pile in my hallway. So I relate to that. You do sound like a reluctant doer to me. So that idea that you put it off and you put it off, but you get to it and you get to it before there are any real consequences. But so that can be a reluctant doer approach or an avoider approach, depending on at what stage you actually turn to it, right? Whether there are consequences or not. But one trick here is to realize that it may not be the same across all areas, and it really may not be the same at work and at home.

So I talk to a lot of people who are perfectly competent and maybe even super competent at work and on top of everything. But in their life admin, it all slips and kind of slides away. And then they have to take a different strategy. That can make sense, too, right? Because you feel like, look, I do this all week at work. It's the weekend. I don't, you know, I'm on the ball all week. It seems like a very natural impulse for many people to,

you know, they're perfectly capable of doing it. We just kind of put it off, right? For sure. And it may be too that it's a strategy for being able to do well at work is to let all the rest of this stuff slide. And how do people know what is going to be like a successful approach for you? Your admin personality can both help you see what kinds of

strategies are typical for that personality, and it may help you come with new ideas for strategies that aren't your usual way to go. But so for instance, an avoider, one good idea would be to make the admin visible for yourself in some really obvious place, like put the letter that you need to deal with from the bank on the fridge or put it on your countertop. Now, for somebody who is really organized, that's going to sound like an awful idea. Why wouldn't you put it in a file? And likewise, for a reluctant doer, for me, I take copious notes. I make sure that I take a picture of those notes and any important document I'm handed, I take a picture of it. Because for me, often a filing system is the bottom of my bag.

This is not a good filing system. If you're someone with that filing system, that is to say the bottom of my bag, but eventually I'll put it in a file, then take a picture of it right when you're handed it so that if there's a later point where you never did put it in the file, you can actually still access the information. And the thing is that there just isn't one answer. We really are different around this stuff. You talked about shame before. And so is there sometimes like negative self-talk that people have to get over? Like, you know, I'm just so not good at this stuff. I'm just I'm so bad at it, you know, and then they avoid the work that they need to do. And then it gets worse. It was one of the real joys of interviewing people about admin was having them say to me, wow, I didn't realize that other people felt this way. I didn't realize that other people felt so behind and so overwhelmed.

And people feel less embarrassed when they know that they're not alone, that this stuff really is hard. What sort of advice do you give people in terms of how to prioritize? How do people figure out? Because sometimes it can just be a big tangled mess if people haven't been proactive about sorting it out. If you know what your preferences are, then you have a better chance of making a plan for how to deal with stuff that you might otherwise put off. So are you somebody who likes to collaborate with other people or likes to go it alone? Do you prefer marathons versus short sprints? Do you prefer to sit down for three hours on a Sunday and get it all done?

Or do you prefer to take 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there and, you know, really zoom through? Are you somebody who prefers high tech or prefers low tech? Do you care about having a little notebook that you love that's beautiful? Do you do something like bullet journaling? You know, do you like to do those things that make it aesthetically pleasing? Or do you think, oh my gosh, no, I just want to get in and get out and be done with it. So don't tell me about colorful, decorative anything. And then you got to know which way is your way to know which one is going to make you show up for the task and make it as not unpleasant as it can be. So for instance, for me, I create things that I call admin study halls. When I was doing my research for the book, I ran a brainstorming session series on admin.

We all got together. Everyone brought their little bits of paperwork, different things they were working on, what they were avoiding or behind on. And we all sat there. We had good food. We had some wine. And, you know, after an hour or so, we would check in and see if anyone was done or they wanted to continue. We'd hit snooze a few times. And people got through a huge amount. And it feels good to have somebody know what your goal was and then afterwards tell you, yeah, great, good job. I think for me, that would be

great. Like, I love I'm like super social. I love that. You know, that's like, oh, yeah, OK, so we'll go to this. I mean, do you like go to a coffee shop and then it's like, oh, let's go, you know, get an ice cream sundae when we're done or something. I mean, like, you know, and is it like the social pressure too? It's like, all right, you created this thing. You've committed to this other person that you're going to deal with all the stuff in your to-do folder and that's going to help you actually sit down and do it. Yes. So a friend and I realized that we both needed to make a will. And so we set up a time. My friend lives in Boston and I live in New York. We set up a time for a video conference on Zoom on our computers at a

time that worked for us both while our kids were at school and we had a window we could do it. And then we sat down at our computers, saw each other, said hello, said something about how our day was going, what our intentions were. And then we sat there for half an hour, did what we were trying to do. And then at the end of it, we congratulated each other. And my usual reward is dark chocolate. And is it supervision or more just like a support lifeline or something like, OK, you know, we got to do this, Elizabeth. Let's let's get together. It depends on on what you want. You know, you can have supervising where somebody's, you know, babysitting or supervising what you're doing. You can have somebody who's actually accompanying you. My mom did this when I had to look for 13 different apartments, apartment hunting. So sometimes you actually want a collaborator

who's helping you with the project. And sometimes you just want someone to say, go do it. Did you do it? Did you give yourself the reward? You know, it's a gift we can actually give someone else to be willing to show up for this stuff. It was like a coupon for an hour of my time or two hours or three hours. And I'll just sit down with you and deal with whatever the like most awful thing is that you're dealing with. You know, someone pointed out to me a terrific analogy. Life admin is a little like gravity, in that it's all around us and it's affecting us. It's acting on us at all times. But unless you know it's there, you're going to have problems.

You try to hang a picture and you don't realize about gravity, you're going to end up without a picture hung and with a lot of broken glass on the floor. And so the first part is just seeing that this thing exists and that it's a significant force in our lives. All right, time for a recap so we can remember this stuff. Takeaway number one, life admin is a real thing and it needs your attention. Make it visible. Make it visible to yourself. Make it visible to other people who care about you so they know when you're doing it and they can give you credit for it. Takeaway number two.

Figuring out your admin personality is a huge step forward in figuring out what kind of strategies will work. So are you a reluctant doer, apparently like me, or maybe you're a super doer, or an admin avoider, or a denier? Okay, takeaway number three, know your preferences. How do you like to work?

Know if you prefer high-tech or low-tech. Know if you prefer short sprints or marathons. And finally, takeaway number four. Find a buddy, another person who's willing to do this with you in a study hall. You can do it in a cafe or you can just do it at home on a video conference. But make the time and you both show up and you commit yourself. Yeah. I like this one a lot. I mean, I don't know, call me a pack animal, but like, I just enjoy being around other people. Give it a shot. It might be motivating. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes.

I've hosted episodes about how to start investing and how to budget. You can find those at npr.org slash Life Kit. And if you're like me and you just love Life Kit and you want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash Life Kit newsletter. And now a random tip this time from fellow Life Kit host, Julia Furlong. So this is a tip for people who forget their wallets. You take 10 bucks or a little bit of cash and you hide it in between your phone and the phone case so that you can always have a little cash. If you've got a good tip, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us a voice memo at lifekit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas.

Megan Cain is the managing producer. Beth Donovan is the senior editor. Our production team also includes Audrey Nguyen, Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Janet Woojung Lee. Beck Harlan and Dahlia Mortada are the digital editors. I'm Chris Arnold. Thanks for listening.