How to tackle simple yet onerous feeling adulting tasks
5 tips for when your to-do list makes you want to stick a fork in your eye
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Last Friday morning, I shared the below list on my Instagram Stories. And as often happens when I share about the nitty gritty of getting things done, my DMs were lively, both with thank you’s for the encouragement and reminder to tackle onerous feeling adulting tasks, and questions about how I make the onerous more manageable. I’m a little surprised that I haven’t already shared my thoughts around what I call #AdultingFridays, so here we go.
In case you are newer to my Substack, for adulting context I am 51 years old, married, have two kids (one in middle school, one in college) and a very excited-about-life standard poodle, am a homeowner, and am a multimedia entrepreneur whose current palette of full-time work includes creative direction/strategy, podcasting, writing, and editing. All of this is to say that on any given day, there are adulting tasks inbound. Today I want to focus on the kind of adulting that is not repetitive in the day to day—for example, meal prep and remembering to pick one’s children up from school. Instead, I will share five tips for how I handle the stream of adulting tasks that can sometimes make you feel like you want to stick a fork in your eye, even if they are actually pretty simple to execute.
1. Create a weekly adulting window to batch your tasks
Through my Edit Your Life podcast, one thing I have heard repeatedly from my time management guests is that batching is your friend. And in my opinion the reason this is crucial is because of cognitive disruption. For the example I shared last Friday, if you have five tasks that are quick to execute—as was the case with that particular list—it is inarguably less disruptive to tackle all of those items in one session versus attention switching five different times across the week.
Choose a day that works best for you. I prefer Fridays because it tends to be a day where my inbound email flow is less aggressive and I also have a pretty good sense that as a result, the likelihood of more adulting tasks coming in is low. I adjust the specific timing of my Friday adulting depending on the tasks in the queue (more on that shortly).
2. Corral your adulting tasks
Create a system to corral your adulting tasks as they come in—versus trying to deal with them in real time, assuming they aren’t urgent. I rely on my to-do app for all manner of mental load relief such as corralling adulting tasks, or you could just as easily type the tasks into notes on your phone or a Google doc, or handwrite them on a notepad.
Use whatever system is easiest and most enjoyable to you so you don’t pair onerous feeling tasks with trying to adopt new systems.
3. Embrace digital convenience whenever possible
This one is especially important if you are like me and hate using the phone, but even if you don’t hate the phone, it’s so much easier to knock off adulting tasks than it used to be thanks to digital integrations. Using my Friday list as an example:
Refilling prescriptions was easy because I used the Walgreens “refill as a guest” option, in which all I needed to do was plug in the prescription numbers—which I had handy because I take pictures of the prescription sheets when I pick up medication—to request a refill.
Rescheduling the COVID booster was lightning fast because I simply accessed the rescheduling link in the online booking email.
Ordering dog medicine was quick because I selected the item from my Chewy order history and selected to have Chewy contact my vet to verify the prescription.
Unsubscribing from 5 lists was fast because I simply scrolled down to the footer of 5 emails in my Yahoo account and hit the Unsubscribe links. Note: I use this Yahoo account to keep things related to online ordering, donations, school/extracurricular signups for my kids, etc., in a place that is not my work email. This account subsequently gets bloated with spam subscriptions when organizations or businesses sell their lists (all I want for Christmas is for organizations and businesses to stop doing that shit).
Checking billing shit was easy because I fully embrace my business banking app to keep on top of accounting matters.
Each of these tasks took one minute or less, which meant my batch session was done in under 5 minutes. There are painful adulting times when I have no choice but to use the phone, but I always seek out digital options first!
4. Be strategic about timing
I have two recommendations related to timing. First, related to digital vs. phone, whatever day you commit to your adulting sessions you will need to be mindful of whether you need to talk to an actual human during regular business hours. The thing that was super satisfying this past Friday was that I knocked those 5 tasks off by 8am since they were all digital, then moved on with my day feeling like I had already crushed life.
Second, it’s worth noting that oftentimes, really onerous feeling adulting tasks feel onerous because of emotional drain, not because they actually will take much time. For example, maybe you don’t want to call to book a follow up mammogram appointment because you have lost someone you love to breast cancer. COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE and I recommend tackling this kind of adulting task as early as possible in the day so you can get past the emotional albatross.
5. Rinse and repeat with time-sensitive matters
One necessary exception to note is related to time-sensitive matters. For example, oftentimes school forms are sent with a quick turnaround deadline that doesn’t fit waiting for my Friday adulting time. Or earlier last week I wanted to make a meal train donation immediately since a friend was going in for surgery. In these cases, look at your adulting corral if you want to tack on some quick wins and apply the approaches of batching, embracing digital, and choosing your timing window in order to reduce mental drain.
I don’t post about all of my Friday adulting actions because I’m usually off to the races after I obliterate these tasks, but if you want to see some real-life samples, check out my Instagram Stories highlight on the topic. I hope this is helpful for you!
P.S. Over the weekend I had a complete (totally dumb) meltdown about something related to in-person/out in the world adulting (that, my friends, is probably fodder for a separate post). When we got home, Violet ran over to get this little gnome (gifted to me by my friend Julianna Miner amidst the height of the pandemic). The bottom of the gnome opens and with great delight Vi and I started calling it the butt hatch. Violet said, “Mom, remember when I was having a hard time and you shared the gnome so I could put my negative emotions in the butt hatch? It really helped. Try it!” I forgot about that moment and was so touched Violet remembered it and brought it full circle. And now I’m thinking this little guy will be my adulting emotional support butt hatch gnome.
P.P.S. Because my Instagram community is the freaking best, I received several messages where people shared a source link for the gnome. If you would like an adulting emotional support butt hatch gnome, you can buy them individually here.
