Life Admin

Reading this book 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.

Drawing on dozens of interviews and her own experience as a working mother, Emens provides a framework to reclaim your time:

• Invisible Labor: Finally give a name to the unseen, uncompensated secretarial and managerial work that drains your time and strains your relationships.
• Actionable Strategies: Discover field-tested tips and tricks to avoid, reduce, and redistribute the endless to-do list, gathered from dozens of interviews with real households.
• Admin Personalities: Identify your own style?and your partner's?as a Super Doer, Reluctant Doer, Admin Avoider, or Admin Denier to understand the root of common conflicts.
• Relationship Tips: Learn how to talk about the division of labor, stop fighting about "unnecessary" tasks, and build a more equitable partnership at home.