I'm Starting to Miss My Admin

I recently heard someone say they miss the admin breaks they used to have between calls. Thanks to AI, they have little to no admin left, so they can no longer justify much of a pause to themselves. Instead, they move from one call to the next, many of them requiring them to be at their best and some of them difficult conversations, and the working day feels much heavier as a result.

I'm nowhere near what they described, but I can see myself heading there. I've recently started automating my admin, from email management to CRM maintenance and marketing scheduling. The process has been enjoyable in itself, and I'd recommend it; the time saved afterwards is real and substantial, and the work is done more consistently and without error. But I can see where that person was coming from - I have less and less downtime in the day now and, dare I say it, I'm starting to miss all that admin.

Well, maybe "miss" is too strong a word, but performing simple, predictable tasks that need very little brainpower or attention has its own value. I'm sure there's something smart and scientific to say about this too, but I'll skip the fancy reference and keep it simple: resting your brain between tasks feels healthy.

The value lies not only in the break it gives your brain, but also in the micro-satisfactions (is that a thing?) of completing something that needed doing. Particularly for people who are slightly OCD like me, who enjoy seeing everything in its place and fitting things where they belong, losing admin means losing part of what steadies the day.

So, what to do? The worst thing would be to find more admin to do yourself, just to replace what you've automated. Or to spend your time checking that your LLM has done its work satisfactorily, beyond the scrutiny needed. The other bad way forward is to do what that person did and remove all intervals from the day, going from one call to another non-stop, particularly when those calls aren't repetitive and take careful thought to navigate. That's your job, and automation only helps you do it if it frees up not just your time but your brainpower for the work that needs it. Without breaks, many of us can't manage that.

The other danger is letting other distractions take over those intervals. I've written before about Continuous Partial Attention, and in my view, the less of it the better. So no, writing an email while listening to a podcast and watching reels is unlikely to centre you or give you the respite admin once did. Or perhaps it does the trick for you, each to their own.

I'm starting to think this is an opportunity to grab time in the day for something else entirely: take a walk, do some gardening, meditate, maybe some yoga. If you're in the office, go and chat with colleagues, or spend a few minutes in that art gallery nearby. I'm sure we can each think of things that fill us up, balance us out and help reset our thinking.

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