It’s admin week in my house! I have a love/hate relationship with the concept of admin week, and with implementing it as a time management tool.

So, what is admin week, you ask? It’s the one week out of the month that I dedicate to hyper-focusing on the administrative parts of my life that I don’t really enjoy doing.

I dedicate my admin weeks to doing the following tasks: 

  • Social Media Scheduling for the Entire Month for My Pen Name(s)
  • Personal Virtual Assistant Work That I Owe Other Authors I Work With
  • Trying to Achieve Inbox Zero
  • Scheduling Newsletters for My Clients
  • Scheduling Newsletters for Myself
  • Budgeting
  • Paying Bills 
  • Major Edits for My Writing
  • Website Edits and Updates for Myself & My PA Clients
  • Figuring Out My Project Plan for the Month
  • Monthly Brain Dump
  • Attempting to Achieve Inbox Zero
  • Scheduling Appointments
  • Prepare and Send ARCs

These are all things that are meticulous, time-consuming, and/or headache inducing for me. I’m good at them, but I dislike the tasks and wouldn’t want to do them every single day. I find I’m more productive with them if I cram them all into a single week out of the month, rather than trying to carve hours out every single day to do these tasks. 

When it comes to the love/hate aspect of doing one admin week out of the month, rather than spending hours every day doing it, I want to discuss both sides of the coin with y’all. 

What I Love About It:

  • I only have to do these necessary tasks I dislike handling once a month. 
  • It’s more efficient than trying to do administrative tasks once a day. 
  • I tend to get more done when I do the icky tasks in one big hyper-focused block. 
  • I know that if I just soldier through this one sucky week out of the month, I can spend the rest of the month focusing on what I love to do. 
  • I can achieve a flow state that helps me check a LOT more off my to-do list than I do otherwise. 
  • If I want to, I CAN technically still take an hour or more out of the day after I get off from working the allotted eight hours on admin tasks to focus on brainstorming and being creative in ways that will facilitate faster writing later in the month, after admin week is over. 
  • I can plan story beats, etc. that will help me write more quickly during my creative weeks. 
  • I can take this time to evaluate if I’m keeping my work focus aligned with my goals for admin week, and for the upcoming weeks. 
  • It’s like taking medicine or doing a shot. I can knock it out in one fell swoop and have plenty of time to recover before the next admin week.
  • I can fully dedicate the other weeks out of the month to being creative and being creatively productive, which is seriously fulfilling. 
  • During non-admin weeks, I can fully immerse myself in the creative process without having to stop and interrupt my flow to do admin work. 

What I Hate About It:

  • I absolutely DREAD admin week because I know I’m about to have to put on my big girl panties, suck it up, and do things I dislike doing for a whole week out of the month. 
  • It’s not as fulfilling to me as the weeks where I get to focus on creating and writing, as opposed to doing administrative work. 
  • As a person with ADHD, pushing through my boredom and executive dysfunction in order to complete these tasks is incredibly draining.
  • The sense of accomplishment I get from completing admin week feels hollow compared to the one I get from writing.
  • It’s harder to refill my creative well during admin week because this week isn’t dedicated to creation or to consuming media that refills my creativity.   

I’ll let you guys know how the process goes this admin week, and whether or not I’m going to continue using this time managment technique in the future. Wish me luck, patience, and willpower!