In researching life admin this year, I’ve often started interviews with a simple question: What is your earliest memory of life admin? The answers vary from early childhood to people’s twenties. While a trip down memory lane isn’t universally easy, I’ve found it’s a helpful first step.
It wakes you up to an important idea: At one point or another, you started learning your way of handling life admin. And that learning never stops.
Two stories to share of earliest life admin memories:
My own 🎃 One of the earliest memories I can recall was a self-taught moment. I have three sisters, and Halloween was a big event in our neighborhood growing up. One year, I noticed that a month after trick-or-treating, my stash of candy was getting stolen from. My little sister had eaten all hers quickly, and I started fretting. I wanted to manage my drawdown and protect my stash. So, I hid it in the toilet tank and limited myself to one piece daily.
Woman, aged 52 📓 Her mother had a tradition of balancing her checkbook, organizing the bills, and doing other paperwork every Sunday at the same time and in the same spot. When the woman was a young girl, she had no idea what her mother did, but the pattern itself was so consistent, it helped her build a pattern like that for herself later on.
Add your own! Leave a comment with your own memory to share with the Wayshaping community.
When you ask yourself where you first learned how to handle life admin, it can help you start to discern the patterns that shape your behaviors and emotions around life admin today.
This is a great exercise to jot down in a notebook.
People often begin their patterns of life admin in response to what they first encounter, mimicking or rejecting what they see in their own behavior and assumptions moving forward.
In her book Life Admin, Elizabeth Emens drives home the social research that the behaviors that make up life admin are sticky: when we’ve started one way, it’s natural to keep going down that path. Emens cites the theory that individuals follow default patterns or rules where they exist, and they attribute expertise to the person or entity that set the rule. Do you have examples of this in your life? Anything you do because “that’s what the banker told me” or “that’s what Mom did”?
The life constraints of these sticky habits also matter. If your earliest memory of life admin is having to figure out how to buy groceries with very little available cash, then your path had a very different starting place than if your memory starts with seeing a parent coordinating renovation plans for their vacation property.
Researchers Brad and Ted Klontz, who focus on the psychology of money, orients people to the idea that a healthy mind is one that’s flexible. Whatever the narratives of your life admin, consider how ready you are to change and rethink them—adjusting your behavior, habits, and ideas about the logistics of life.
Many people have multiple “firsts” in their life admin memory bank. You may have a different earliest memory for managing money than you do for coordinating household details, for example. That can be helpful to identify for yourself.
Do you feel better about one part of life admin than another? Maybe that is, in part, because you have different narratives for each.
It’s not uncommon, for example, to have dramatically different first memories of money versus dealing with healthcare.
Whatever your earliest memories of life admin are, for most people, they come with emotions—both positive and negative—and tones of morality.
Too often, when we look at early memories, we don’t allow ourselves to reconsider the assumptions. Allow yourself a moment to question the emotions and moral ideas you started with.
Across your experience of life admin, do you appreciate the narratives you’ve taken to heart, or are you open to learning new ways of operating and thinking about life?
Obviously, your earliest memory of life admin is just one of many events, people, and narratives that contribute to how you handle life admin today. But when you reflect on what you learned in that memory, it can help you realize just that—that life admin is learned.
You can start to wonder: What am I learning today? What do I want to learn differently? What do I want to learn again?
Whether it’s learning from your earliest memory or the subsequent events that have shaped you since then, start valuing your skills as hard-earned.
Across the spectrum of life admin work, we’re all competent at something. Recognize whichever part of life admin makes you feel confident, and give yourself credit for having learned it.
At Wayshaping, we're obsessed with the idea of reducing the amount of time and effort life admin takes up. But what does that look like in practice? In short, it looks a lot like learning something.
Learning simple tricks. Learning new tools. Learning whole skillsets. Learning to share life admin with a partner differently.
For example, if managing finances feels overwhelming, you might focus on learning simple budgeting tools. If you struggle with shared responsibilities, you could explore strategies for coordinating tasks with a partner.
The journey of reducing life admin’s impact starts with just turning attention to which area of weakness you want to turn into an area of curiosity.
We’re all part-time students when it comes to life admin. As I’ve written, friends are often the best antidote to life admin. And doing life admin solo is a pattern bound to feel isolating. By being transparent with your friends and family about what you’re looking to learn in life admin, you can often find peers who you can learn a lot from.
That’s the model for Wayshaping—operating as a peer and partner rather than an expert. Take one small step: Share what you’re looking to learn next in life admin in the comments below.
Check out these great sources of inspiration and fact for this piece. They're worth a read.
Journal article
Book
Scholarly Blog
Book
In researching life admin this year, I’ve often started interviews with a simple question: What is your earliest memory of life admin? The answers vary from early childhood to people’s twenties. While a trip down memory lane isn’t universally easy, I’ve found it’s a helpful first step.
It wakes you up to an important idea: At one point or another, you started learning your way of handling life admin. And that learning never stops.
Two stories to share of earliest life admin memories:
My own 🎃 One of the earliest memories I can recall was a self-taught moment. I have three sisters, and Halloween was a big event in our neighborhood growing up. One year, I noticed that a month after trick-or-treating, my stash of candy was getting stolen from. My little sister had eaten all hers quickly, and I started fretting. I wanted to manage my drawdown and protect my stash. So, I hid it in the toilet tank and limited myself to one piece daily.
Woman, aged 52 📓 Her mother had a tradition of balancing her checkbook, organizing the bills, and doing other paperwork every Sunday at the same time and in the same spot. When the woman was a young girl, she had no idea what her mother did, but the pattern itself was so consistent, it helped her build a pattern like that for herself later on.
Add your own! Leave a comment with your own memory to share with the Wayshaping community.
When you ask yourself where you first learned how to handle life admin, it can help you start to discern the patterns that shape your behaviors and emotions around life admin today.
This is a great exercise to jot down in a notebook.
People often begin their patterns of life admin in response to what they first encounter, mimicking or rejecting what they see in their own behavior and assumptions moving forward.
In her book Life Admin, Elizabeth Emens drives home the social research that the behaviors that make up life admin are sticky: when we’ve started one way, it’s natural to keep going down that path. Emens cites the theory that individuals follow default patterns or rules where they exist, and they attribute expertise to the person or entity that set the rule. Do you have examples of this in your life? Anything you do because “that’s what the banker told me” or “that’s what Mom did”?
The life constraints of these sticky habits also matter. If your earliest memory of life admin is having to figure out how to buy groceries with very little available cash, then your path had a very different starting place than if your memory starts with seeing a parent coordinating renovation plans for their vacation property.
Researchers Brad and Ted Klontz, who focus on the psychology of money, orients people to the idea that a healthy mind is one that’s flexible. Whatever the narratives of your life admin, consider how ready you are to change and rethink them—adjusting your behavior, habits, and ideas about the logistics of life.
Many people have multiple “firsts” in their life admin memory bank. You may have a different earliest memory for managing money than you do for coordinating household details, for example. That can be helpful to identify for yourself.
Do you feel better about one part of life admin than another? Maybe that is, in part, because you have different narratives for each.
It’s not uncommon, for example, to have dramatically different first memories of money versus dealing with healthcare.
Whatever your earliest memories of life admin are, for most people, they come with emotions—both positive and negative—and tones of morality.
Too often, when we look at early memories, we don’t allow ourselves to reconsider the assumptions. Allow yourself a moment to question the emotions and moral ideas you started with.
Across your experience of life admin, do you appreciate the narratives you’ve taken to heart, or are you open to learning new ways of operating and thinking about life?
Obviously, your earliest memory of life admin is just one of many events, people, and narratives that contribute to how you handle life admin today. But when you reflect on what you learned in that memory, it can help you realize just that—that life admin is learned.
You can start to wonder: What am I learning today? What do I want to learn differently? What do I want to learn again?
Whether it’s learning from your earliest memory or the subsequent events that have shaped you since then, start valuing your skills as hard-earned.
Across the spectrum of life admin work, we’re all competent at something. Recognize whichever part of life admin makes you feel confident, and give yourself credit for having learned it.
At Wayshaping, we're obsessed with the idea of reducing the amount of time and effort life admin takes up. But what does that look like in practice? In short, it looks a lot like learning something.
Learning simple tricks. Learning new tools. Learning whole skillsets. Learning to share life admin with a partner differently.
For example, if managing finances feels overwhelming, you might focus on learning simple budgeting tools. If you struggle with shared responsibilities, you could explore strategies for coordinating tasks with a partner.
The journey of reducing life admin’s impact starts with just turning attention to which area of weakness you want to turn into an area of curiosity.
We’re all part-time students when it comes to life admin. As I’ve written, friends are often the best antidote to life admin. And doing life admin solo is a pattern bound to feel isolating. By being transparent with your friends and family about what you’re looking to learn in life admin, you can often find peers who you can learn a lot from.
That’s the model for Wayshaping—operating as a peer and partner rather than an expert. Take one small step: Share what you’re looking to learn next in life admin in the comments below.
Check out these great sources of inspiration and fact for this piece. They're worth a read.
Journal article
Book
Scholarly Blog
Book
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere. uis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
DeleteLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere. uis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Delete
Comments
Log in to join the conversation
Sign up for a free account or log in