Stop Feeling Behind: Get Back on Top of Your Life in 1 Day

(00:52):

You will schedule between six and 12 overdue appointment or tasks. You will check off between 10 to 20 open items, and you're going to free up future weekends and evenings by simply taking this one intentional day. And following the five step framework that I'm about to teach you, you're going to feel capable. You're going to realize you're no longer behind. And more importantly, you're going to have proven to yourself that no matter how busy and overwhelming life can get, all it takes is one day and you feel like yourself again.

(01:50):

I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. You have picked an incredible podcast to listen to or watch because today you and I are going to do the perfect life admin day together. I have thought about this. My team and I have unpacked this. We are going to help you take all the invisible stuff that is quietly driving you crazy, that is making your life harder than it needs to be. I'm talking about the calls you haven't made, the appointments you keep putting off, the errands that live in the back of your mind and steal your energy. Even when you're trying to relax, we all have the things that are piling up and driving us crazy that we can't get to. And so here at 143 Studios, we call those kinds of things life admin. And so here's what we're going to do.

(02:39):

I'm going to show you how to trade one weekday. And you're going to finally deal with all this because you're going to have this stuff handled just one focused day. I call it a life admin day. And if you're sitting there going, "Okay, well, what exactly is a life admin day?" It's exactly as it sounds. It's one day that you schedule that you take for yourself, not so you can go on vacation, not to just kind of relax on the couch, not to run errands for everybody else, not to clean the house, but one day that you are going to dedicate on purpose to getting absolutely everything that is piling up in the corners or riding around in the back of your car waiting to be dropped off somewhere or sitting on the countertops or nagging you in the back of your mind, one day to attack it all.

(03:34):

I am so excited that you are watching this episode about creating the perfect life admin day here on YouTube. And I just want to address what is going on. So this represents parts of my life admin. Okay. I got bills here that I need to open and deal with, junk mail that I want to get off of. I've got a laptop from one of my kids that has been sitting dormant with dust on it because I mean, nobody's been in high school in our house now. Oh my gosh. So always been out for like nine years, 10 years. I mean, I got a laptop. I got to figure out what to do with this thing. I know I should donate it or recycle it or something, but this is here. Calendars. Calendars are very important because I prefer to schedule life admin with calendars. This is just, oh my God, crap that I need to go through.

(04:27):

Post-it notes that we're going to talk about, headphones that you might want to put on when you're making your calls during the call block that we're going to talk about. And I've got some highlighters in the back of this jar because there's some Sharpies in here too. We're going to cross things off with a Sharpie because that's really strong and then we'll highlight things that we want to pay attention to. And so when you do your life admin at home, you might be surrounded by stuff. That's cool. You might have prescription bottles that you need to remember. I'm the kind of person that if it's physical, I'm more likely to ... Oh yeah, I got to do prescription. These are birthday cards that we need to send out. So these are all things that haunt me that I can't seem to get to. You're going to be surrounded by that stuff too.

(05:11):

And that's a win because we're going to go from having it haunting you to actually taking care of it in one day. And here's some examples of what I'm talking about. These are things that people on my team said, oh my gosh, this is what I would use the life admin day. That standing desk that's still in the box. I need to set it up. Broken boots that you think about every morning, but you haven't gotten them to the cobbler. A wifi router. You got one of those that has moved apartments with you twice, Amazon returns or returns that you can no longer return because they've been sitting in the corner waiting to be returned that they're past the day to return. Picture frames that need pictures, birthday cards that haven't been sent. For those of us in the US, the real ID, that ID that none of us have, 90% of people don't even have this thing and you need it to get on a plane.

(06:00):

That's what this day is for. It's for appointments. It's for the phone calls you don't have time to make. And I promise you, if you can just commit one day of your life on purpose this entire year to plowing through all of these administrative tasks that drive you crazy and take up space in your mind and ruin your weekends because no one else is going to do it. Holy cow, you are going to feel on top of the world. You're going to get your weekends back because you're not going to have to spend your weekends trying to fit all this stuff in. And in just a minute, I'm going to teach you a very specific five-part framework that you will follow on this one intentional day that you're about to schedule for yourself. Here are some of the payoffs from just one day. You will schedule between six and 12 overdue appointment or tasks.

(06:48):

And I'm going to teach you a simple trick so that you don't have to think about them again for the rest of the year. I'm talking about your hair appointments, your nails, your dentist, your doctor, the veterinarian, all those appointments for the next year. You will check off between 10 to 20 open items. I'm talking returns, repairs, things that need to get mailed, stuff that needs to get fixed. You will eliminate like bye-bye between two and five things that just annoy you every day. You know the missing light bulb, the batteries, the second set of keys that need to be made. You know what I'm talking about. You think about it once a day. You're going to handle three to five things that you've avoided for months. Whether that's a DMV appointment, it's paying for a bill, it's calling the doctor's office, it's talking to your health insurance, and you're going to free up future weekends and evenings.

(07:40):

And most importantly, by simply taking this one intentional day and following the five step framework that I'm about to teach you, you're going to feel capable. You're going to feel back on top of your life again. You're going to get so much brain space and peace back.

(08:29):

Valentine's has a day. St. Patrick's has a day. Groundhog has a day. You get to have a life admin day. And so I want you to pick it. I know you may be thinking, well, hold on, Mel. You're saying I got to take a day? Yes, you have to take a day. And you may be thinking to yourself, "Well, I don't have time to take a day." And so let me just address this notion that you don't have time to take a day to address things that are piling up and making you feel like you're behind in life and stressed out. I mean, you might be struggling financially right now and you're working a bunch of different jobs and you say, "Well, I can't afford to take a day." Or you're constantly spending your time caregiving or you're mourning or you're going through a setback or a diagnosis.

(09:14):

And so you already feel beaten down and life admin just feels like another mountain that you don't even have the energy to climb. And so let me speak directly to you if this is you. Avoiding all of this because it feels hard and overwhelming just makes it worse.

(09:37):

It really does. You can handle this because simply saying, "I'm going to block off my calendar. I'm going to move the distractions and I'm going to dig in. I'm going to open up these bills even though I'm scared to. I'm going to make the phone calls even though I'm confronted by it. I'm going to find the time to get to the DMV or to get my new license or whatever it may be. " Simply doing that signals to you, to your brain, to your life, "Hey, there's a lot going on, but I'm still in charge." Before I walk you through how you are going to move through your life admin day to get the most stuff done and to feel the best by the end of it, I got to cover some ground rules because the ground rules also expose the mistakes that I've made in the past when I've tried to take a day to get on top of stuff.

(10:25):

These are ground rules that are mandatory. Okay? So ground rule, number one, your designated life admin day is not a decluttering day. You are not allowed to organize closets or sort through doors or do a spring cleaning. Decluttering distracts you because decluttering is this thing that feels really productive as you're moving stuff around and you're making the drawer really pretty, but it's a trap because even if the drawer is pretty, you still don't have any batteries. You still have bills to pay. You still don't have an appointment for your hair or your kids' wellness appointment. You still have cable boxes to return. You still have a bag of clothing that needs to be dropped off that's been in the back of your car for five months. And so it's stealing your energy and this is energy that you need in order to finish all the life admin stuff you've been putting off.

(11:17):

So rule number one, no, decluttering. Don't even think about it. Ground rule number two. Try to get your house or apartment as quiet and as empty as you can. If it's possible for you to be alone, I mean, what a luxury. I get it. But if you can be alone, no people, no pets, no nobody that needs your time right now. The day works for life admin. If you can stay focused and uninterrupted, I just want you to make space to be able to do the five steps. Ground rule number three, this is your life admin day. And so your life admin day is about you. And the way that I'm going to walk you through these five steps, you need to think about yourself first. Then you're going to think about other people. You already try to handle everybody else's administrative stuff first, and that's why you run out of energy before you can get to your own.

(12:13):

The reason why the life admin day in these five steps that I'm going to walk you through is going to work because we're going to focus on you. And the final ground rule. There's absolutely no shame, no moral judgment. When it comes to when you take the life admin day, how you take the life admin day, what you're going to be digging into during your life admin day. A life admin day is for you. And so by making the time, even though it may feel overwhelming, you are saying to yourself, "I feel capable. I am capable of handling this. " And you will feel better simply by scheduling the day. All right, are you ready?

(13:06):

It's as simple as it sounds. You're going to take everything that is on your mind and you are going to dump it onto a piece of paper, everything that's unfinished, everything that's bothering you, everything that is piled up somewhere in your house, every errand that you keep meaning to run, everything you keep meaning to return. In fact, as we were preparing this episode, I was laughing with our senior producer, Amy, and I'm like, "Amy, when you come over to tape this thing tomorrow, I want you to look to the right. When you walk in our front door and you are going to see a clear trash bag that is full of summer clothes that have not fit me in a decade, they are sitting there. And by the way, they are on the floor under where the long coats are hung because I'm kind of hiding them.

(13:53):

It's been there for four months." And you know what I did yesterday because I was embarrassed once I told her, I actually moved it to the garage. Now that's not life admin that is moving my problems around and not actually fixing anything. Every time I walk past that clear bastic bag, you know what I say?

(14:12):

And then I also see the purple, I've got this sundress in there that's like a light lavender with a dark purple stripe. And it reminds me of the summer that I was really, really thin 10 years ago before menopause. And then I'm like, and then I think about how much money I spent on that stupid thing. And then I feel like I only wore it three times and then I feel conflicted. And then I keep walking and then donate summer clothes goes back up into my mind, but not when you do a brain dump because if it lives in the paper, it actually can die in your head. And there's some really interesting research that explains why this works. If you're watching on YouTube, I am holding up the research from Baylor University. This is such a fascinating study. Let me tell you about it because I love this study.

(15:03):

We've talked about it before. So this is right here from the director of the study. He's talking about, this is Michael K. Scullen who's got a PhD, he's the director of Baylor Sleep Neuroscience and Cognitive Laboratory. And he says, "We live in a twenty four seven culture in which our to- do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime." And most people just cycle through their to- do lists in their heads. So they wanted to explore in this study whether the act of writing down all the unfinished things that were on your to- do list before you go to bed, if it had any impact on your ability to go to sleep. Now, here's what they found. This is super fascinating and it shows you the power of writing down everything in your mind that you're currently holding onto.

(15:48):

They found that writing a to- do list offloads all of those thoughts that are up in your mind and it reduces worry. And they found in this study that when people would write down their to- do list, they would fall asleep faster. And they tested this against a control group that was writing down all the things they did. So you write down all the things you did do, right, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things that you got done. And then the other group wrote down, they did a brain dump. What are all the things that I'm still worried about? What are all the things that I have left to do? It was the group that wrote down their to- do list that wasn't finished that fell asleep faster. Why? Because putting it on paper allows it to live on the paper and it erases the worry in your mind because you have it on the paper.

(16:34):

And so that's what we're going to do in phase one. You're just going to write down all of the things that are bothering you. And feel free to walk around your house. Walk around your house, look in the garage if you have one, look in your car. What are all the things that you need to do that are bothering you? The bills that are stacked up, the returns that you don't have time for. Just keep writing them down. You can do this throughout the day before because things are going to keep coming up. Let me give you some examples of things that our team currently have on their brain dump to attack on their life admin day. You ready for these? Okay. Ben has an air fryer that he's ordered, but he's too tired to put it together. So for a couple months, he just keeps looking at it and ordering takeout.

(17:27):

Jesse has a car registration that's two years late. I guess this is her version of gambling every time she drives, because Jesse, you could get a ticket, an expensive one for crying out loud. Here's another one. Tracy has a LabCorp bill from two years ago that she needs to do something with, but she can't figure out the Labcorp login. When you really stop and think about it, what is this going to take? 10 minutes. And we've been carrying this stuff around for months and years. A doctor who needs a copy of a scan that you got and you've been putting it off for a year. There's a picture that you need to hang in your bathroom that's framed. Good job. You got it framed, but it's still sitting. Actually, I just thought of another thing. I bought the cutest little hook thing for keys. It's brass.

(18:17):

It goes with everything. It's in the entry. Do you know where it is? It has been sitting on top of my grandmother's cabinet, three inches from where it needs to go with the screws, with my keys on top of it for probably what, three months, you guys, you've seen it laying there? As if some magical fairy's going to come and put it up for me. Oh my God. A walking pad. Another person on our team ordered a walking pad four months ago. Guess where it is? In the box, in the closet. Oh, another person takes holiday cards and then puts a three-hole punch in them and then puts, I guess, a ring on them and then stores them. That's a cute idea, but now it's haunting her because that was three months ago. For me, the dogs, our dog homie has gotten quite large and I realize I'm probably overfeeding him and I'm the one that's making him quite tubby and I need to do a little bit of research, probably take him to the vet, find out what he weighs and what I should actually be feeding him.

(19:19):

I've been thinking about this for six months. Again, what was one of the ground rules, everybody? Life admin, no judgment.

(20:03):

90% of us in my company either don't know what it is or we don't have it, which means we don't have it because we don't know what it is. We are still traveling with our passports. I have no idea if I have that thing or not. Doctor's appointments, car service, the broken doorknob. Underwear, I'm going to say it. How long have you pulled on underwear that is stretched out, stained, disgusting? And you're like, "I need to buy underwear." And you're like, "Oh God, okay. Well, I'll get to the underwear. Instead, I got to read this headline." Okay. That's the kind of thing that can be on your brain dump. Sky's the limit. You're going to find that there's lots of things that make the list. You can keep adding to it. I want you to highlight the top five to 10 things that you're going to commit to tomorrow.

(20:49):

And here's the thing. Just making the brain dump is going to shift something inside of you because you're shifting the mental load from managing it upstairs to putting it on a piece of paper. And so don't be surprised if after doing the brain dump and highlighting what you're going to do, you feel a little excited. You feel a little motivated. And if you feel that way, you can grab a few wins tonight. There's no problem doing some laundry or starting to kind of get yourself organized. If you start to feel like, wow, feels really good to get this down on paper. Wow, I'm really proud of myself that I'm taking tomorrow to just plow through all of these things that drive me absolutely bananas. I'm getting excited that I'm getting on top of my life instead of life constantly knocking me down. Don't you think your home should be a reflection of who you are?

(21:40):

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(22:30):

It works like it should. Plus, Ashley provides fast, reliable, white glove delivery right to your room of choice, making the entire process simple from start to finish. Visit your local Ashley store or head to ashley.com to find your style. And now you have set yourself up to hit the ground running to have the perfect life admin day. I'm so excited to explain this to you. So you've got your calendar printed out so you're not going to look at your laptop. You've done your brain dump. You've highlighted the things that are really bothering you that you kind of want to prioritize. Now you are ready to jump into your perfect life admin day. Now, we have thought and researched extensively about how to structure this. We've looked at research related to productivity to what's called cognitive load, which is the kind of mental heaviness that you get.

(23:21):

We've looked at decision-making fatigue. We've looked at research on the best time of day to do things. And what I'm about to walk you through is the structure of the perfect life admin day. And we are going to do our life admin day in five specific time blocks.

(24:12):

My computer isn't there. And I, for whatever reason, just tend to move, move, move, move, move through things. And so wherever you're going to be the most productive to be able to just put your head down and move through the call block, that's where I want you to be. We're going to give you two hours to make phone calls. And here's how I want you to think about this. Now, for me personally, I don't like working with a computer calendar. And the reason why I don't like working with a computer calendar when I'm going through a life admin day is it's way too easy for me. I'm highly distractible to jump into Slack, to jump into texts, to all of a sudden be looking at emails. That's not what you're doing. The way that you're going to be the most effective is if you've got everything that you need when nine o'clock strikes in the morning, you can print out your calendar for the next couple months.

(25:05):

That way you don't have to open up your laptop and look. Because you open up your laptop, you're going to get a text, you're going to look at social media, you're going to start responding to emails. That is a death trap. So print out your calendar so you kind of have a sense of what days you can book appointments for, have your brain dump next to you, and then start making your calls. And we're going to start with the appointments that are related to you personally. And by personally, I mean your physical, mental, emotional maintenance of you. And here's the pro tip. We're going to start at your head and then we're going to move down. So what's on top of your head? Well, if you have hair, haircuts. We're going to move to your eyes. I know this sounds so dumb, but we got to get everything for you.

(25:46):

Do you need to get an eye exam? Do you need to get your glasses fixed? Your nose, your heart, your gut, your legs, your knees. Oh, I forgot your teeth, your dentist. I want you to really think about yourself top to bottom. And here's another incredible tip. You ready? When you call to make your hair appointment or you call to make your eye exam or you call the dentist, you call for your manicure, nails at the end of your hands. Make the appointments for all year. Don't just make it for the next time you're going. Make sure you make the next one too. Put it on repeat. If it's a monthly maintenance, go ahead and schedule it all year. If it's an annual appointment, do this year and next year. This is why I'm always frustrated because if I haven't done a life admin day and I'm calling at the last minute, all the freaking appointments are taken by people like you who are organized.

(26:41):

And so I want you to use that tip. You're not just making one appointment. "Hey, well, I got you on the phone. Let's just schedule it out for the rest of the year. So I get my haircut every six weeks. Let's go out six weeks. What week is that? Okay, let me flip to my calendar. We're going to start with you physically. Then we're going to move to your stuff. We're going to talk about insurance. Do you need to book your car to be serviced? Do you need to call the pharmacy or your doctor's office to refill prescriptions? Can you order everyday essentials in bulk like toilet paper, detergent? Can you set up a subscription that you actually use? Once you figure out the kind of maintenance and upkeep of you, now you're allowed to move on to other things and other people, like the vet, like appointments for your kids that are driving you crazy, appointments for your mother.

(27:33):

Then we're going to move on to any place that you've been avoiding calling. Any appointment you need to reschedule. Anything that you've been saying, "I'll do it later." No. From 9:00 to 11:00, you're going to do it now. And if you're somebody who has trouble sitting and just focusing, here's what I want you to do. This is going to sound ridiculous, but I saw it on Instagram, which means it works. You ready? You're going to get a leash or a rope or a belt, and you are going to tie yourself to your chair. I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you leash yourself to the chair, you will catch yourself every time you go to get up because you're going to want to get up because this is very boring. But the payoff is so incredible to know that this is done, that you have bulked these bookings so you've taken care of it for a year.

(28:31):

You got your dog grooming for a year. You've got your dentist appointment this year and next year. You got your well visits for your kids way before sports season, so you get your physicals. You are on top of this. You know how fantastic you're going to feel by 11 o'clock? Holy cow. Now, why does this work and why are we doing calls first thing in the morning? Because decision fatigue, which is you're just exhausted by the decisions that you need to make. It's the lowest in the morning. And these calls create the biggest mental relief per minute because you can bang them out. And if we push them later to the day, a lot of these places are closed during lunch. A lot of people start having hold times later in the day. And so you doing it first thing in the morning creates momentum.

(29:21):

You are leveraging your brains like firepower first thing in the morning and avoiding this. A lot of these calls you've probably been avoiding or forgetting to do for six months, and that's created wait. The second you just pick up the phone and dial and you schedule it, it's like, boom, that's done. Cross it off the list. Boom, something that you've been avoiding for six months takes under six minutes. You're not going to fix anything. You're not running errands. You're only scheduling. You're only calling. You're only putting things in the calendar for the future one task at a time. When it's done, big check Checkmark, that's a great win and you move on. If it requires tools, a car, any emotion, it does not belong in the nine to 11 block. And now I know you're probably thinking, okay, Mel, if I'm doing calls, oftentimes you end up on hold.

(30:16):

If you have to call your cell phone carrier, you're like, oh my God, you're on hold for so long or you're on hold with the health insurance company while they forward you or cancer or you're on hold to change tickets for the airline and you're on hold. What are you going to do? You can have some things that are here with you that you can be doing while you're still in the chair because I don't want you to leave the chair because if I tell you to go do laundry, you're not going to get distracted. If I tell you to unload the dishwasher while you're on hold, you're now going to be unloading the dishwasher and then you're going to be making lunch and then you're going to be doing something else. I need you in the chair to get these calls done. But here are some suggestions for what you can do while you're sitting on hold.

(30:55):

Number one, you can keep putting other things on the brain dump. Number two, you can continue to look forward through your calendar and highlight days that are open for appointments. The other thing that you can do, you can take your kids' school calendar and make sure that it is laid out into your calendar while you're on hold. So you have key dates for what your kids have coming up in the next year in the calendar so that as you're making appointments, you have the key dates there. If you have a purse or a backpack from work, have it right next to you. If you've got a 30-minute hold, pull that sucker out because you've been dying to clean it out and get it organized and throw things out. Another pro tip, you can have your laundry basket next to you. You can be folding laundry while you're doing it, matching socks.

(31:40):

Anything that you can do in the chair while you're waiting on hold, awesome. You know how incredible it's going to feel? To look up and it's 11:00 AM and you've made 20 phone calls and you've booked all these appointments and you've taken care of yourself and you're on top of it. I mean, that alone would be worth the day. Now, once you've done all that, once you've got it in the calendar, once you've got the year mapped out, oh my God, give yourself a round of applause. Doesn't that feel good? Of course it feels good. Of course.