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I’ve shared my strategy for staying on top of the never-ending avalanche of “life admin tasks” before: I use this inexpensive planner to schedule to-do items against a calendar. This means that if I receive school emails with various minutaie I will inevitably forget — pizza day on x; donate cans on y; “dress for a luau day” on z — I will add to my calendar as soon as I receive the email so I can then delete it and forget about it until it needs to be remembered. (Specifically, I’ll make a note for the day before pizza day: “Pizza day tomorrow!” so I remember not to pack lunch, or “buy cans for drive” three days before cans for a drive are due so I have a little give and can buy them whenever I’m headed to the grocery within that three day window.) This strategy is helpful because I can space out admin items (e.g., “order uniforms” Monday, and “buy school supplies” a few days later) so that I’m not waterlogged by tasks on any given day. It also helps me protect my mental bandwidth. I can fly through my inbox, assigning micro-tasks to myself for a week, two weeks, three weeks from now and then I know I won’t drop the ball, but can permit myself to forget about them until they matter.
I also try to check my inbox sporadically — a few times a day — versus continuously, because it helps me feel less bombarded by demands. I will look at you when I’m ready to look at you. (Ha!) I turned off the email preview function on my iPhone so that I will just see an alert that I have new emails without seeing who sent them — so I’m not lured in, angler fish style.
I used to do something even more systematic back when I was running a tech business and had a lot of inbound inquiries that were not urgent, but that I wanted to get back to when convenient: I created a tag in my Google inbox labeled something like “Friday Emails,” and if I decided the correspondence did not require an immediate reply, I would tag it with the “Friday Email” label and then archive it. On Friday afternoons, when I was already running low on energy and unlikely to accomplish much substantive work, I’d put on some music, grab an ice coffee, and power through those notes all at once. This enabled me to free up my focus for what mattered during my most productive work days — but ensured I would get back to these people at some point. Perhaps I will implement something similar again.
I don’t know how you feel about email and text etiquette, but the flood of correspondence via both of these channels has made it very difficult to respond in a timely way. I am an inbox zero girl, and I do read everything that comes across my phone/desk, but I find myself increasingly looking for ways to avoid my inbox, reduce time spent in texts, etc. I want to live my life, not plan for it behind a screen. My husband often rails against email culture in particular. He points out that when we were growing up, schools had to carefully plan, copy-edit, and print every important correspondence to either mail or send home with children. These messages cost something, and were handled accordingly. Now it is so cheap and easy to lob something over to a recipient via email! We might receive a ten or twenty messages in a week about our children’s activities, school, goings-on, etc., and at some point, we will miss something, or we skip or skim, or corrections are sent that cause crossed wires, etc! I don’t have a solution for this, of course. It’s wonderful that we can get information so quickly and easily, and I like the function of being able to search my inbox for details, but — my God. It’s a lot of noise, isn’t it?
Sometimes it feels like I’m just an enormous information filter. I’m absorbing all of this stuff I have to do and all of these logistics I need to coordinate — and I become ornery about it, which in turns means I become a more porous version of a filter than I should. I can’t be bothered to print, sign, scan, and email that sunscreen authorization form for camp today. I’ve been trying to update the name on my Delta SkyMiles since I got married, and now it really matters, and I cannot fathom getting on the phone to sort it out. The last thing I want to do is figure out why I’m locked out of my Lands End account for ordering the kids’ uniforms.
What do we do on these days? How do we muscle through and get it done?
Here are a few things I do when I am running low on admin energy:
01. I tackle a cluster of quick wins — things that only require a quick email, an e-signature, etc. Then I joyfully and dramatically mark them as complete on my to do list for today. Sometimes I even fudge this a bit by adding items I’ve already completed — e.g., maybe this morning I placed an order for Emory’s eye patches; I’ll add that in post-completion and tick it off with flourish. Why not!? The minute I see that I’ve tackled half or more of my daily to-dos, I feel a little rush of relief.
02. I timebox — I set a timer for thirty minutes and tell myself to accomplish as many of the items on my list as I can, and then reassign anything unaccomplished for tomorrow, the next day, etc. Somehow, creating an arbitrary end time can motivate me to muscle through and get a few things done. You can do anything for thirty minutes!
03. I ask for help. Mr. Magpie and I are pretty egalitarian about household tasks — I handle the lion’s share of the children’s stuff (clothes, school assignments and events, activities, gear, childcare) and our social calendar, and he handles the lion’s share of cooking and maintaining the house. But every now and then I decide I really cannot motivate myself to get something done even if it falls under my purview. This year, it was figuring out what soccer league to send our daughter to. Magpies, I could not. I could not! And so I asked Mr. Magpie to tap in there. Hopefully I return the favor!
04. I reassign tasks to spread them out more evenly across the week. Buying white out pens has helped me feel better about the manual process of reassigning items to another day via my planner. I used to hate seeing items crossed out versus checked off (type A much?! completion desire is real!) — now I just erase them with these. Problem solved.
05. I ask whether that thing really needs to be done right now. Sometimes I am surprised by the answer to this. I was dragging my feet for weeks (!) about finding a new dentist, and I kept reassigning it to myself each Monday for the following Monday, and then I decided, “You know what, I just had my teeth cleaned last month, I can punt this off for another few months before it really matters — just make sure it gets done before I need to schedule my next six month cleaning.” And it felt like a weight had been lifted. Sometimes I also ask: “What would happen if I just didn’t do this?” Would it really matter? In an ideal world, we can get it all done, but…? At what expense? For example, Mr. Magpie and I have a long, growing list of items to consign, sell, donate, and yet we find ourselves with no extra space in the margins for these low-yield undertakings. So what?! We will get to them when we get to them. For now, we are focused on more urgent matters.
06. Take a day off admin. I specifically try to avoid assigning admin tasks (if possible) on Mondays! I always feel like I’m catching up and in need of an easy on-ramp at the head of the week, so why pack it with more stuff? It feels so refreshing to have a Monday with a short to-do list.
07. I break the task down into smaller “to-do” parts. Sometimes this means adding a few to-do items to a single day so I feel like I’m rewarding myself for a multi-step task — but other times it means I can scatter those micro-tasks across a few days versus having them all pile up at once.
08. I time myself doing a recurring task. This was a helpful Magpie reader suggestion: time yourself folding the laundry, taking the kids to school, dropping off the dry cleaning. How long does it actually take? Longer or shorter than you’d mentally imagined? It’s all about creating a realistic preview. In general, I find I underestimate how long things will take, so this has helped me make more space for certain tasks, and in turn ensure tht I don’t feel as rushed throughout the day, or as if I’ve under-delivered at its end. On the flipside, if you discover that, say, checking the spam filter on your blog takes only three minutes each day whereas you’d imagined it would take fifteen, it can help motivate you to knock those tasks out. (“Just three minutes!”)
09. Make it as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Put on a good playlist — this chore one, this quiet work one! — and make yourself a latte! Treat yourself to delivery for lunch if you’ve knocked out your morning to-dos! Put on a romantic comedy while you’re filling out medical paperwork or shredding files!
10. Rearrange my workspace. Sometimes just clearing my desk of clutter, filing paper away, taking out the trash, etc makes me feel a bit readier to tackle my to-dos. Visual noise can be distracting and demotivating.
What do you find helpful when you just need to get it done?!
Post-Scripts.
+On designing work spaces for creativity.
+The osprey and the heron: “It’s interesting to consider what they’re naturally equipped for, and how they manage the world with what they have.”
+Life rearranges itself to accommodate for our losses.
Shopping Break.
+You might remember this perfect little cropped coatigan from last year (I wore it A LOT) — it’s back! I have it in blue but it’s now available in other colors, including a very fetching olive green.
+Just bought a stack of gym towels to use in our little gym area while doing my Heather Robertson videos. Perfect for your gym cart! I love organizing little nooks of our home to make them look better and feel more functional.
+A splurge, but this cashmere striped henley is in my closet and I predict it will get an absolute ton of wear. I like the idea of it paired with a slip skirt, tucked into high-waisted colored denim, layered beneath other knits, paired with the Colbys (as seen here). It’s divinely soft. I love a henley neckline, too – can make winter knits a bit sexier.
+Sarah called it in her Substack this past week, but zip-front dresses are having a moment. Love this one she shared from Me + Em, and you know I love this oversized Aligne! It runs enormous but looks very chic (IMO) with a simple mary jane / ballet flat. La Ligne’s Selby is the sexier version of this nano-trend.
+Worth noting that all of those dresses are DENIM — so many great denim dresses out right now. More of my favorites here. I have been living in this denim dress on the weekends especially (I believe you can get $50 off with either code ESCAPE or SUMMER50). It just feels so easy, and you can make it more contemporary by throwing on a trendy pair of sandals! (Currently obsessing over these after seeing them on Cassandra (second slide).)
+Cheerful French bistro steak knives.
+Loving these black flat boots. I keep noticing gold hardware as a micro-trend — on hair accessories, shoes, bags! Love this take.
+New in from J. Crew: this sweater trench situation (!) and this cable knit short sleeved sweater, which I immediately imagined pairing with silky trousers (look for less with these).
+I just ordered my son one of these classic navy blazers to wear this holiday season while 50% off. I’ll be hunting for some cute cords or plaid trousers to pair them with for holiday!
+Love this wavy spoon rest.
I absolutely love posts like this! I’m all about the life organization tips! One thing that weighs heavily on me is how to own and organize all of the little magic making moments – keeping in mind milestones for kids, lists of fun activities or games to try, places to go, making sure we spend time with extended family. For various reasons, not all of these things come together organically and in this stage in life (toddler and baby!) it’s very easy to find ourselves stuck in a rut of the daily drudgery. How do you capture all of that? To be clear, I want these things!
I want to be able to go out to dinner with my family every Friday and not spend 20 mins figuring out where to go, is the diaper bag packed, can we find an activity for the toddler, do we need a reservation, etc.?
Or to spend rainy Saturdays playing together and working on reading but oh where is this toy or puzzle?
Or sharing a cocktail together but did we remember XYZ ingredient? Or how do we make that one trick we saw on Instagram that one time? and on and and on and on! Small slice of the chaos in my mind hahaha would love to hear from others how they manage it all!
I completely know what you mean (!!!) — especially with kids as little as yours. One thing I remember doing during the peak of the pandemic was scheduling time (like, actually blocking off twenty minutes) to “plan activities.” I remember doing this on Monday afternoons during my son’s naptime, while my daughter was watching iPad or “resting” (ha) in her room. (She was never a good napper.). I would consult a couple of trusted resources — I really liked Mother Could for sensory play, and The Busy Toddler for activities, and sometimes I’d just scroll Amazon looking for new stickers or whatever — and would figure out what I needed in order to strategically set up certain activities the following week. Like, do I need to procure glue, or baking soda, or whatever? And then I would either order what I needed or add the items to the grocery list. This was so, so helpful to me because otherwise I would NEVER have gotten the energy to make cookies with the kids, or take on sensory play projects. It’s just too much to pull that rabbit out of a hat in the moment!
I am thinking about doing this myself for something different — my husband and I recently realized that we’ve signed up for all these different newsletters from museums, restaurants, book shops, venues, etc, and that we feel like we always get junk in our inbox that we don’t want. Instead, we are talking about creating a shared reminders list / note of all of the venues that are interesting to us and then calendaring time to visit their sites to see what’s coming up soon, maybe once a month or even once a quarter, and ordering tickets / making plans to visit well in advance. This has the added benefit of giving us lead time to find sitters. It also means we *probably* won’t miss too much but we aren’t being fractionally bombarded with lots of stuff we don’t want to read/see/etc. You know?
Curious how other people handle this!
xx
Jen, thank you. That had never occurred to me, that planning activities took time and space and resources. I spent nap time on Busy Toddler and now my kids are in their swimsuits playing with tongs, a sieve, and a big bin full of ice with their Frozen figurines. “Ice harvest.” Day saved.
YAY! So glad to hear this. YES, recognizing all the invisible labor that goes into planning these things! It is work!!
xx
This was amazing, thank you!! Agree on the invisible load of planning things – my well-intentioned husband is just like “let them just play?” but that lasts for 3 mins before the whining starts or end up on the ipad, which is fine if I need a minute but I want to be much better about spending good time together.
Added to my ever growing to-do list, I ended up not even needing to order much bc I already had supplies/toys and just needed some “organized thinking” to figure out a new way to use them.
Love this date night planning as well!
Also finally, adding a q for your fashion posts – what the heck are we wearing for bus drop off and pick up?! It’s a short walk down the block so leggings and a t or sweatshirt seem fine yet so sloppy compared to the more polished parents, or maybe it’s just me haha!
I’m so glad to hear that! Yes, organized thinking time is key. I even do this for things like planning dinner parties, menus, outfits for the family, etc. I’ll have a block of time on my calendar to tackle those items!
Love the bus drop off / pick up question – will put some thought into this and answer in an upcoming Ask Magpie!
x
I’ve started making separate lists for “Virtual Admin Tasks” (things that can be done from a phone or computer) and physical/tangible Admin tasks (sort the stack of papers, pick up library hold, etc”. If I find myself in a lull at work or without a book in a waiting room I can start picking off the virtual ones!
So smart – love this! xx
Batching tasks is a habit from my pre-baby work life that I now use in my everyday life. I will even create my to do list grouping like items together. Phone calls, emails, bills to pay, errands, etc.
Brilliant! Love this idea.
Something that works for me when dragging feet on admin or at work: delete social media off my phone. I have found IG in particular actually adds more to my plate. I see other moms or women doing additional things I hadn’t thought about, and feel self imposed pressure to do even more. For work, it’s a time suck that leaves me unfocused and raises my anxiety more.
I’ll delete the apps for just a few days. Helps tremendously for my stress levels.
Love this idea – will def reach for this suggestion next time I have a bad case of feet dragging!
xx