Life admin : how I learned to do less, do better, and live more

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Title:

Life admin : how I learned to do less, do better, and live more

Author:

Emens, Elizabeth F., author.

ISBN:

9780544557239

9781328606709

Physical Description:

xix, 261 pages ; 22 cm.

Subject Term:

Self-actualization (Psychology).

Self-management (Psychology).

Stress management.

Summary:

It's a relief just to talk about it. It's heaven to fix it: "admin," the administrative tasks that have exploded in our busy lives. Here's the book that will give you many hours of your life back. Scheduling. Planning. Paying. Using "self-service" websites. The busier our lives are, the more the invisible "admin" piles up on top of us. Elizabeth Emens was a working mother with two young children, swamped like so many of us, when she realized that mental labor was consuming her. She planned to conduct interviews and focus groups to find out how people cope with it all--and then the project became even more personal as she faced divorce and two relocations. Desperate to survive and to help others along the way, she gathered favorite tips and tricks, admin confessions, and the secrets of admin-happy households. Here is the one book you need in order to get past the invisible quicksand that is holding you back from the joys of living. Which type of "admin personality" are you? Do you know any Strategic Ball-Droppers? Do you suffer from Madmin Mind? Life Admin is the book that will teach us all how to do less of it, and to do it better. --

Holds:

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	158.1 EME	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Oakdale Library	158.1 EME	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	158.1 EME	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	158.1 EME	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

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.

Author Notes

ELIZABETH F. EMENS is an Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She earned her BA and JD from Yale, and her PhD from King's College, Cambridge, where she was a Marshall Scholar. After becoming a master of Divorce Admin., she moved to New York City, where she now lives with her two children.

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

"Admin," writes Emens, refers to the deluge of invisible labors that underlie our home and work lives without being a credited aspect of either, from sorting mail and scheduling doctors' visits to navigating government bureaucracy and coordinating the care of others. Emens takes a serious look at admin what it is, how we approach it, and how to make it less of a struggle, even during the onslaught of life-defining moments although her approach is lighthearted. Conducting brainstorming sessions and interviews for this book while raising her own children and navigating a divorce, Emens examines how privilege and gender affect admin, and she outlines ways to improve admin efficiency alone and in a relationship. She closes with suggestions for businesses and programs to reduce individuals' admin, and the appendixes include a quick-tips guide; a quiz to determine admin type (Super Doer, Reluctant Doer, Admin Denier, Admin Avoider); and lengthy notes. Going a long way to make the invisible visible and increase understanding for all, this fits well into conversations about emotional labor and time management in the digital era.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist

Introduction	p. ix
Part I Admin Problems
1 What Is Admin?	p. 3
2 The Costs of Admin, or Where's Your Head?	p. 17
3 Admin Personalities, or Who Are You?	p. 29
4 Who Does Admin?, or Is Admin for Girls?	p. 44
5 Admin Is Sticky, or If Everybody's Doing It, How Come Some People Are Doing More of It?	p. 55
Part II Admin Surprises
6 Admin That Can Wreck You	p. 67
7 Admin That Can Fix You	p. 82
8 Admin Judgments	p. 96
9 Admin Pleasures	p. 104
10 Admin to Win Friends and Influence People	p. 114
Part III Admin Futures
11 Relationship Tips	p. 129
12 Individual Strategies	p. 155
13 Collective Possibilities	p. 174
Epilogue	p. 199
Note to the Reader	p. 205
Acknowledgments	p. 206
Appendix A Ideas to Try	p. 210
Appendix B Admin Personalities Quiz	p. 216
Notes	p. 224
Index	p. 251

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