“Life admin” can take over if you don’t tackle it head on. The Wellbeing and Student Advice Team have put together some tips and tricks to stop it building up and becoming overwhelming:
- Make your bed: it won’t take long and will really improve how tidy things look
- Make a packed lunch – the cost of meal-deals will add up – fast!
- Set aside admin-time: schedule it into your day
- To-do lists are your friend: then you don’t need to keep all the tasks inside your head
- Break things down to smaller tasks: large tasks can be overwhelming, small steps are more manageable
- Prioritise your priorities. Work out what is the most important and what could be delayed.
- Notice your displacement activity behaviour, acknowledge to yourself when you are avoiding focusing on the task in hand. Try to consciously enjoy the displacement activity - think about it as a break - and actively and consciously end the activity and go back to task focus.
- Automate where you can: rather than remembering to pay bills every month, have them set to come out of your account. BUT, make sure that you keep on track of the expenditures so you are aware of. For your finances, use blackbullion tools Get money skills for life : University of Sussex, the is a particularly good section on learning how to budget which will be helpful.
- Reward yourself: small progress is still progress
- Be kind to yourself: if things didn’t go to your admin-plan, you can always make a new one
You can also watch this helpful video on time-management: Time management : Skills Hub : University of Sussex