Life Admin Life Hacks

Latest Episodes:

010: Managing digital photos Feb 19, 2019

Show notes

In this episode Mia and Dinah talk about the challenges of managing digital photos including storing them so you can find them when you need them, backing them up and doing something with them to make you happy.

Mia and Dinah share the current disorganised state of their digital photos. They’ve both failed to implement a consistent system to store, backup and use their photos.

Mia interviews Sally-Ann Lyons, a former travel agent and now clothing designer, who manages a large volume (over 30,000) of photos for both her work and from her travels. Her system includes:

always travelling with her laptop (MacBook Air)
downloading and editing her photos every day so as to not create a backlog of activity
filing as she goes in iPhotos both chronologically and by continent and country
only showing her photos on her laptop and not printing them out
backing up her laptop automatically when she is at home
backing up to a hard drive when she is travelling
containment by creating a limit on how many photos she can store by limiting her hard drive storage capacity.

Mia and Dinah both discuss how they are going to tackle their digital photos backlog and develop new habits going forward.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about she has finally sorted out superannuation for herself and her husband.
Mia talks about sorting out her children’s memorabilia and creating albums for class photos and achievement certificates.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about sending out the invitation to her son’s birthday party via multiple channels and how this complicated managing the RSVP process.

RESOURCES

Apps to make something with your digital photos:

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009: Finding Motivation and Momentum Feb 05, 2019

Show notes

Mia and Dinah explore how to find inspiration, get motivated and set goals to change your approach to life admin.

Mia and Dinah talk about the difference between motivation and insinspiration and potential sources of both. They discuss how you might approaches behaviour and habit change, which are required to address your life admin system.

They detail many different ways of setting goals and suggest that first its important to know how you are wired before choosing a method that will work for you. They outline options for goal setting including:

SMARTER goals
setting one personal goal
the Desire Map
one one word for the year.

Dinah shares how she got motivated to make a change by having Mia and this podcast as her accountability partner. Mia says she is very goal orientated and has embraced the ‘one word’ and Desire Map approaches.

RESOURCES

Motivation and Behaviour Change

Fogg Behaviour Change Model

Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg

Know Yourself

Gretchin Rubin’s, Four Tendency Quiz

The Cycle of Years, Stratejoy

What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite, David Disalvo

Goal Setting

One word for the year

One personal goal approach, Nicole Avery

The Desire Map, Danielle Laporte

Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg

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008: Decluttering part 3 Dec 25, 2018

Show notes

In this episode Dinah and Mia focus on how to help others declutter, and Mia interviews Jo and Kristen from Springtime Services, professional organisers in Melbourne.

Jo and Kristen describe how they support clients to declutter part or all of their homes. Their service draws on the advice of experts but they stress they avoid being prescriptive. Every client is different and their approach needs to be tailored for what will work for their clients.

Jo and Kristen find the biggest challenges for people to declutter are photos, children’s artwork and toys and gifts. They share the advice of Marie Kondo in respect to gifts: “Don’t keep gifts out of guilt. After the joy of the gift-giving moment is through, you can donate the gift without guilt. It has served its purpose.”

They talk about the particular challenges of decluttering when someone is downizing or moving to residential aged care and provide the following tips:

Allow people to tell their stories about the items they are letting go of.
Don’t let people handle their items too much as it can be more difficult to let them go.
Find the right pace and time limit sessions as decision fatigue can set in after a few hours.

Their advice for listeners decluttering their own home is:

Take items away immediately after sorting – don’t just move them to another part of the house.
Getting started is the hardest part – it can feel overwhelming but the reward is worth it.

LIFE ADMIN HIGH

Dinah talks about the Spriggy pocket money app that she and her children use to make pocket money more convenient, educational and suitable to the way we handle money today.

POWER TOOL

The Clutter Coach’s podcast Organize Your Life – iTunes or Stitcher

RESOURCES

Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.

007: Decluttering part 2 Dec 18, 2018

Show notes

Mia and Dinah talk about their own decluttering journeys and give listeners their top tips.

Mia and Dinah share their family backgrounds and reflect how that often links to your approach to holding onto belongings. They talk about the process they have gone through for both:

Reducing the inflow of stuff: being a better gatekeeper of what enters the house and buying less.
Working on the outflow of stuff: a work in progress for both of them.

Dinah’s top 5 tips for decluttering are:

Get some quick wins by starting with an area of the house that is not sentimental and where your decluttering can have an immediate impact.
Get buy-in from the rest of your family.
Remember that giving things away gives joy to others and yourself.
Embrace the 'cost per use' mentality and choose quality and long term use.
Someday never comes. If you haven't used it recently you probably never will.

Mia’s top 5 tips for decluttering are:

Make handing on items easier by having a dedicated space to put donations and dedicated recipients to pass things on to.
Embrace the '1 in 1 out' rule not just for clothes but for most things in your house.
Declutter as you play by going through your kids’ toys, books, stationery, crafts and clothes regularly when playing, reading or hanging out with them.
Let go of obscure ingredients in your pantry and fridge that are unlikely to be used again.
Store non-season clothes and shoes away from your wardrobe and take the opportunity to cull when you retrieve them.

RESOURCES

Places to donate items:
- Australian charity store listing - Opshop.org
- Toy Libraries Australia
- Reuse centres and trade & exchange programs - Planet Ark Recycling
Places to sell preloved items:
- eBay
- Gumtree
- Facebook Marketplace
- Australian auction house listings for luxury, fine design pieces, collectibles and antiques - ABC Auction Room
Straight and Curly podcast episode on decluttering

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006: Decluttering part 1 Dec 12, 2018

Show notes

Mia and Dinah talk about the mindset and philosophies of various decluttering experts.

005: Scheduling the Inevitable, the Inspirational and an Hour of Power Dec 04, 2018

Show notes

This episode covers another foundation for establishing a robust Life Admin system: scheduling.

Mia and Dinah discuss how most people have no set time when they do their Life Admin tasks, which often means doing only the ‘urgent’ and not the ‘important’. The important tasks weigh on your mind, yet you never complete them. Mia and her partner refer to these tasks as ‘blockers’: tasks you spend more time thinking about than they would actually take to do it.

They discuss how many of us have routines for our personal life but usually only schedule tasks and commitments at work. However, scheduling can be very useful for Life Admin. At its essence, scheduling embraces the idea that if it’s on the calendar it gets done.

They discuss three aspects of scheduling:

To Do List tasks. Tasks can be divided into three types:
- ‘Hour of Power’ - requiring a focused effort. They recommend scheduling in an Hour of Power to tackle challenging tasks.
- ‘Two Minutes Too Easy’ - can be done as they arise.
- ‘Ten Minute Time Killers’ - chunky tasks that can be done in idle time.
Inevitable tasks and activities - Tasks we know that will arise on a regular basis such as car servicing, hairdressing and dentist visits. Proactively schedule them in when it is convenient to you, rather than reacting to them.
Inspirational and fun activities - Make time for what you want more of like movie nights, mountain bike riding, trips away with friends, gardening, book club and date nights.

Scheduling is a natural extension of using the shared calendar and To Do lists tackled in previous episodes.

The benefits of scheduling include:

making time to get the important, distracting tasks done so you no longer have to dwell on them
forcing you to make choices about how to best spend your time
helping make new habits stick.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

Mia talks about having an ‘unsubscribe festival’ - taking the time to unsubscribe from regular e-newsletters to eliminate the noise in her inbox.
Dinah talks about cleaning the lingering paperwork from the desk in her study which makes it a much more inviting place to work.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about how she needed to renew her passport but she failed to get to the post office within the month required on the paperwork and so she now needs to redo it. Scheduling would’ve helped!
Mia planned to start working on her digital photo backlog over the weekend but found the activity pairing strategy she employed didn’t work.

BOOK REVIEW

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown - book about evaluating what is essential in your life to regain control of your choices and focus on things that really matter.

RESOURCES

The Fly Lady - free daily, weekly and monthly routines and coaching for house cleaning and organisation.

004: Mastering To Do Lists Nov 28, 2018

Show notes

Mia and Dinah talk about the benefits of To Do Lists and the steps they followed to optimise their To Do List systems.

This episode discusses how To Do Lists allow you to get clarity on what needs to be done and the pros of centralising your lists on one digital tool that can be shared with other family members.

They outline the difference among:

To Do Lists - are actionable, time-bound, contain verbs
Checklists (eg prepping the house for holidays) - help you remember how to do something efficiently and comprehensively
Reference Lists (eg movies I want to watch) - capture suggestions, recommendations and sources of info

These lists are all worthwhile but can often be confused.

They talk about the various online tools available and what they use. Dinah is using Wunderlist. Mia is using Reminders in her iPhone for her To Do list and Notes for checklists and references. She mentions that she uses voice commands for Siri to add items to both.

Mia and Dinah discuss the various options of categorising and prioritising lists and how they refreshed and reorganised their To Do lists systems.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about how easy it was to go on holiday with all her bookings saved on her Google Drive.
Mia talks about how she has already started her Christmas shopping online using wishlists she has added to during the year, and a spreadsheet saved on Google Drive.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about failing to complete her online grocery shopping.
Mia talks about having technical hiccups with her shared calendar system and its inability to synchronise frequently.

POWER TOOL

Doodle – free online scheduling app to simplify choosing an event date or time for multiple people.

RESOURCES

David Allen’s book Getting Things Done
James Clear – Talks about prioritization and habit formation
How I Work – Amantha Imber podcast

To Do List apps include:

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003: Managing passwords and form filling data Nov 20, 2018

Show notes

This episode covers two more important foundation elements for a life admin system: having a password manager and collating data frequently used when filling out forms.

Mia and Dinah discuss how many passwords they need to manage life admin, and how difficult it is to have a fail-proof and secure system to store them all. They also consider how many forms they need to fill out with the same data over and over again. Mia admits to having a password book which put her at risk of identity theft.

They talk about the benefits of password managers, which can generate strong passwords for new accounts, store passwords securely, and autofill login forms with one master password. They operate on your computer as a browser extension and an app on your smart phone.

They go through how they approached choosing and setting up a password manager. They also outline how valuable the secure document storage and form filling functions of the apps are.

The benefits of a password manager include:

Ability to generate and store strong passwords
Eliminating the need to remember passwords
Allowing you to easily access account passwords to allow you to complete your life admin wherever you are
Ability to store form filling data, including credit card details, making online form filling much faster and simpler.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about how easy it was to buy tennis tickets quickly and easily with convenient access to her shared calendar and passwords on her phone – allowing a purchase of the tickets to happen within 5 minutes during a train ride.
Mia talks about how she cleared out the deep clutter of her recipe folder, removing all useless and distracting things so can enjoy using the useful recipes that remain.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about how she had changed credit cards to maximise her frequent flyer points but has found that the online app is so cumbersome that it makes managing the account too difficult and not worth the extra points.

POWER TOOL

Gretchin Rubin’s quiz on The Four Tendencies – Helps give you better insight into how to change and maintain new habits, by understanding how you respond to the inner and outer expectations placed on you.

RESOURCES

Last Pass password manager

Keeper password manager

Nicole Avery’s family productivity and organisation blog - Planning with Kids

Gretchin Rubin’s book on The Four Tendencies

Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.

002: Going paperless Nov 13, 2018

Show notes

This episode talks about the second key foundation of an efficient life admin system: going paperless.

The hosts, Mia and Dinah, describe the five steps they went through to go paperless:

Setting up a dedicated admin email address and cloud storage account for life admin.
Setting up a password manager to remember and protect online accounts.
Opting out of paper billing, statements and notifications.
Throwing out existing paper they no longer needed.
Scanning the remaining papers and uploading them to the cloud storage drive.

They talk about the criteria they used to decide what to keep, including tax records.

The benefits of going paperless include:

reducing clutter
minimising the need and effort to do filing or recycling
providing remote access to key documents to allow you to share information or do life admin tasks whenever are wherever you like
reducing paper consumption to support environmental sustainability.

LIFE ADMIN HIGH OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about the joy of visiting the orthodontist and scanning and filing the contract in Google Drive while still at the office, eliminating the need to bring more paper into her home.
Mia talks about the peace of mind of removing of the paper clutter from her home and the extra space and focus that emerged.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about the firehose of paper that's still coming into her house relating to her children’s school and extracurricular activities.

POWER TOOL

Dinah talks about how Brian Tracy's book Eat That Frog directs readers to focus on critical tasks and not get bogged down in the less important, quicker tasks.

RESOURCES

Tidying expert Marie Kondo:
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Book
- Tidy up your home: The KonMari Method - Online Training Course
Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast episode 172: Toss Unnecessary Papers
Brian Tracy's book on procrastinating and prioritising: Eat That Frog

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001: Setting up a shared family calendar Nov 07, 2018

Show notes

This episode introduces the first of several foundations to a great life admin system: a shared family calendar.

Mia and Dinah discuss how they previously both used multiple calendars and that there was no single point of truth of what was happening. They describe how they went about setting up a shared family calendar available on all their devices, Mia using Apple iOS and Outlook and Dinah using Google Calendar. They include all family activities and recurring household tasks in this one calendar and share it with their partners, creating a single view of all family events.

The benefits of a shared calendar include:

creating a single point of truth of what's happening when
sharing the responsibility of all family activities without separate complicated instructions for your partner or children
allowing both adults in the household to easily arrange their own social life and events.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

Dinah talks about setting rules for her calendar to reinforce the use of it in her family.
Mia talks about how she efficiently managed the photos from her son’s 5th birthday party to produce a photobook effortlessly within days of the event.

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

Mia talks about meeting with her financial planner and the difficulty of preparing a budget based on all the scattered and incomplete information sources for their expenses.

POWER TOOL

Dinah talks about her new printer/scanner which allows documents to be scanned directly to a cloud storage drive and how this is making a transition to a paperless house so much easier.

RESOURCES

Gretchen Rubin's book on habit formation: Better Than Before

David Allen's book on productivity: Getting Things Done

Barry Schwartz's book on decision making: The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less

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