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

You are going to get on top of your life again. We all have stories about needing to go to the DMV, or calling your credit card company and being on hold for two hours, or having an overdue appointment that never gets scheduled. These are these tasks that are called life admin. We are buried alive under our bills, and battery boxes, and receipts, and phone calls we need to make, and today we're gonna fix it. If you can just commit one day of your life, on purpose, plowing through all of these administrative tasks that drive you crazy, you are going to feel on top of the world. 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. It's the same five blocks done in the same order every single time you do it. You will schedule between 6 and 12 overdue appointment or tasks. You will check off between 10 to 20 open items, and you're gonna 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 gonna feel capable. You're gonna realize you're no longer behind, and more importantly, you're gonna 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. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. I have been dying to talk to you. I am so excited that you're here. It's always an honor to be able to spend this time and to be together with you. And if you're a new listener, or you're here because somebody shared this with you, and I think this is [laughs] gonna be one of these episodes that a lot of people get texted to them. I just wanna 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 gonna do the perfect life admin day together. I have thought about this. My team and I have unpacked this. We are gonna 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 gonna do. I'm gonna show you how to trade one weekday, and you're gonna finally deal with all this 'cause you're gonna 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 kinda 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. I am so excited that you are watching this episode about creating the perfect Life Admin Day here on YouTube, and I just wanna 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 wanna get off of. I've got a laptop from one of my kids that has been sitting dormant with dust on it because, uh, I mean, nobody's been in high school in our house now... Oh my gosh, Soy's been out for like nine years, 10 years? I mean, I, I, I, I... We've got la- I got a laptop. I gotta figure out what to do with this thing. I know I should donate it, or recycle it, or something, but this is here. Um, calendars. Calendars are very important 'cause I prefer to schedule life admin with calendars. This is just, oh my God, crap that I need to go through. Post-It notes, uh, that we're gonna talk about. Headphones that you might wanna put on when you're making your, uh, calls during the call block that we're gonna talk about. And I've got some highlighters in the back of this jar, 'cause there's some Sharpies in here, too. We're gonna cross things off with a Sharpie 'cause that's like really strong, and it'll highlight things that we wanna 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 kinda person that if it's physical, I'm more likely to rem- oh yeah, I gotta do a prescription. These are, uh, birthday cards that we need to send out, right? So these are all things that haunt me, that I can't seem to get to. You're gonna be surrounded by that stuff, too, and that's a win. 'Cause we're gonna go from having it haunting you to actually taking care of it in one day. And here are 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 a 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 Wi-Fi router, you got one of those? That has moved apartments with you twice. [laughs] 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 date of return. Picture frames that need pictures. Birthday cards that haven't been sent. Uh, 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.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 gonna do it, holy cow, you are going to feel on top of the world. You're gonna get your weekends back because you're not gonna have to spend your weekends trying to fit all this stuff in. And in just a minute, I am gonna 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, and I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna free up future weekends and evenings. 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 gonna feel capable. You're gonna feel back on top of your life again. You're gonna get so much brain space and peace back. So let's get into the specifics. Okay. The first step of the life admin day process is just pick a day. And the day that I recommend that you dedicate to doing life admin, if you can, is Monday. So I do want you to open up a calendar. If you're driving, don't do that right now, but maybe think ahead. You can come back and listen to this when you have your calendar open. Open up a calendar, look at the next couple weeks, pick a day. Pick a day on purpose that you're gonna designate as your life admin day. 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 gotta 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, 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, 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. It really does. You can handle this because simply saying, "I'm gonna block off my calendar. I'm gonna remove the distractions, and I'm gonna dig in. I'm gonna open up these bills even though I'm scared to. I'm gonna make the phone calls even though I'm confronted by it. I'm gonna 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 gotta 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. 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 drawers 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 kid's 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. 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 gonna walk you through these five steps, you need to think about yourself first.Then you're gonna 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. The reason why the Life Admin Day and these five steps that I'm gonna walk you through is gonna 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? You ready to walk through how exactly we do the Life Admin Day now that you got your day scheduled? First of all, you're gonna do a brain dump the day or the night before the perfect Life Admin Day. It's as simple as it sounds. You're gonna take everything that is on your mind, and you are gonna 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, uh, 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 kinda hiding them. It's been there for four months. And you know what I did yesterday 'cause 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 plastic bag, you know what I say? [sighs] And then I also see the purple... I've got this, like, 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, "Ugh." 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, 'cause I love this study. 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. Scullin, who's got a PhD. He's the director of Baylor's Sleep Neuroscience and Cognitive Laboratory. And he says, "We live in a 24/7 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. 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? Bah, bah, bah, bah, 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. And so that's what we're gonna 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. Uh, 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. Uh, Jesse has a car registration that's two years late. I guess this is her version of gambling every time she drives, 'cause you could... Jesse, you could get a ticket, an expensive one, for crying out loud. Here's another one. Uh, 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. Like, when you really stop and think about it, what, what is this gonna take, 10 minutes? And we've been carrying this stuff around for months and years. A, 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. It goes with everything. It's in the entry... Do you know where it is? It has been sittingOn top of my grandmother's cabinet, three inches from where it needs to go, with the screws, with my ski- my, 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 gonna 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. Uh, oh, a- another person, uh, is, 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, that's a cute idea, but now it's haunting her because that was three months ago. For me, the dogs. Uh, 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. I, I, I've been thinking about this for six months. Again, what was one of the ground rules, everybody? Life admin, no judgment. And now here's what I want you to do. Now you're gonna choose your top five to 10 priorities, okay? And I want you to take a highlighter. These are the priorities that are gonna be top of the list for life admin when you wake up tomorrow morning. Now, how do you choose these? You're gonna highlight the things that bother you the most. They're the things that you've avoided for months. They're things that cost you money or time by not doing it. They're things that create daily friction. For example, TSA PreCheck or getting that Real ID. There's something called a Real ID that's been here in the United States for, I guess, for, like, 10 years. They've been warning us it's coming. 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 gonna 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 then you're like, "Oh, God, okay. Well, I'll, I'll get to, I'll get to the underwear. Instead I gotta, I gotta read this headline." Okay, that's the kind of thing that can be on your brain dump. Sky's the limit. You're gonna 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 gonna commit to tomorrow. 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 gonna 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 kinda get yourself organized. Like, 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, 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? Of course it should. That's why you need to know about our sponsor, Ashley. Ashley has styles that balance timeless appeal with modern trends that will help you bring your personal look home. In fact, I was looking at the Ashley website, 'cause I know you're gonna go, "Well, Mel, what do you like?" The Crystalann collection. It's a modern farmhouse look that feels warm and inviting, but it's still clean and elevated. I love clean and elevated. With beautiful light brown wood tones, black hardware accents, and the dining room table's super cool. It expands from 80 to 98 inches. It has this removable leaf. It seats up to 10 people. And if you look at the table, you can picture holiday dinners, family gatherings, friends making all kinds of memories. And every Ashley piece is thoughtfully designed, built to last, so your home doesn't just look good, 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 ex- so excited to explain this to you. So you've got your calendar printed out, so you're not gonna look at your laptop. You've done your brain dump. You've highlighted the things that are really bothering you that you kinda wanna 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. 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're going to do our Life Admin Day in five specific time blocks. And the first time block of your Life Admin Day is what we call the call block, and it goes from 9:00 in the morning till 11:00 in the morning. You're gonna spend two hours making phone calls and scheduling appointments to set the future you up for success. I want you to sit yourself where you're gonna be the most productive. And for me, for me, I cannot do this at my desk. The reason why I can't do this at my desk is because I'm more productive at the kitchen table. I'm less distracted, 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 blockThat's where I want you to be. We're gonna 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 gonna 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. That way you don't have to open up your laptop and look, because if you open up your laptop, you're gonna get a text, you're gonna look at social media, you're gonna start responding to emails. That is a death trap. So print out your calendar, so you kinda 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 gonna 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 gonna start at your head, and then we're gonna move down. So what's on top of your head? Well, if you have hair, haircuts. We're gonna move to your eyes. I know this sounds so dumb, but we gotta get everything for you, right? Do you need to get y- 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. And so I want you to use that tip. You're not just making one appointment. "Hey, while I got you on the phone, let's just schedule it out for the rest of the year. So I get my hair cut every six weeks, let's go out six weeks. What week is that? Okay, let me flip to my calendar." We're gonna start with you physically, then we're gonna move to your stuff. We're gonna 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? Uh, 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. Then we're gonna 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 nine to eleven, you're gonna 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 gonna sound ridiculous, but I saw it on Instagram, which means it works. You ready? You're gonna 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 gonna wanna get up because this is very boring. But the payoff is so incredible to know that this is done, that you have booked these bookings, so you've taken care of it for a year. You got your dog grooming for a year. You 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 gonna feel by eleven 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, right? 'Cause you can bang 'em out, and if we push 'em 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. You are leveraging your brain's, 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 weight. 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 gonna 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 mark, 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 eleven block. And now I, I know you're probably thinking, "Okay, Mel, if I'm doing calls, oftentimes you end up on hold." Like if you have to call your cell phone carrier, you know, and 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 cancel, or you're on hold to change tickets for the airline and you're on hold. What are you gonna do? You can have some things that are here with youThat you can be doing while you're still in the chair, 'cause I don't want you to leave the chair, because if I tell you to go do laundry, you're now gonna 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 gonna be making lunch, and then you're gonna 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. 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 'cause you've been try- you've been dying to, like, 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. Anything that you can do in the chair while you're waiting on hold, awesome. You know how incredible it's gonna 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. [clapping] Doesn't that feel good? Of course it feels good. Of course. Now you can get up out of your chair because we're gonna move on to time block number two, which is all about errands. And I love this block, but I wanna talk about what type of errands I want you to be running on Life Admin Day. Because errand block is not doing the errands that you do every week. If you can get to the grocery store every week, we're not gonna grocery shop from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM today. Today, I want you to take the two hours, and I want you to do all those things that you can't seem to get off your list, and I'm gonna give you a bunch of examples of this, okay? We're gonna be doing things like dropping off the clothes that have been in the back of your car for the last five months. This is showing up and getting that interview done for the TSA PreCheck here in the United States. In fact, Charlotte on our team was telling us a story that she rescheduled this exact [chuckles] appointment eight times because she kept telling herself she did not have time to do it, and then finally, she just made the five-minute appointment work. That's all it took. When she was done, she was euphoric. She's like, "Why did I reschedule this eight times?" Do you know how much time it took to think about it, to reschedule? No. This is the kind of errand we're running today. You're gonna get the oil changed because it's been overdue for six months. You're gonna go to the DMV, and you're gonna get your driver's license renewed or your car registration done. You're gonna show up at the bank and close that account that you've been meaning to close 'cause it only has $13 in it, and it's just time to do it. You're gonna get your voter registration done, your flu shot. You're gonna stop by the hardware store and pick up that part that you need or that battery that fits in your dog fence collar, and you can't seem to find the right one online. You're gonna find that one screw size that you need in order to fix something, and you can't get it online because you're not quite sure what it is, so you need to bring the screw. It's been in your car for four months in the cup holder. You remember it every time you put your thermos down, and it wobbles. There's that thing I need to do. We're doing that today. You're gonna drop off the two laptops that have been collecting dust since your kids were in middle school at that local nonprofit. You're gonna stop at, uh, the hospice regional center, and you're gonna sign up for the training and get more information. You're gonna drop off all the books that you checked out from the local library. You're gonna sign up and take a tour at the gym that you've been meaning to join for six months, and while you're there, you're gonna set up a free training with someone who works there, so you can get a tour and be walked through and understand all the equipment this weekend. You're gonna actually mail the Wi-Fi router from your move two months ago. And here's a pro tip for your errand block. I highly recommend that whatever errands you are choosing to run today in this two-hour block, you write it on a Post-It note. Why? 'Cause I know you, and the second you get in your car, you're not gonna feel like getting your oil changed. You're gonna feel like going to your favorite store that's on the same road and wandering the aisles. I want you to keep yourself honest, and if you put a Post-It note on your dashboard in your car, or you keep it on your phone as you're, you know, riding the subway or walking around the city, you now have your marching orders, and you are not allowed to take a detour while I'm in the neighborhood. And this will keep you focused 'cause you only got two hours, and you got a lot of stuff to get done. As soon as this block is done, the errand block, it's gonna be 1:00. It's time for lunch, and you are gonna feel so amazing, oh my God, because at least three to five things that have been haunting you are now done. And if you stopped right here at block number two, this day would've already been worth it. Holy cow, because block one was calls, boom, we got that done. We got your life scheduled out. Now block two, boom, we got all those errands done that you don't normally fit into your week. Now we are cooking, and that brings me to the time block number three, and we call this the money block. Now, don't get all freaked out 'cause I know facing moneyCan be a little confronting. I remember when my husband and I were struggling, uh, the last thing I wanted to do was do a money block. But here's what you're going to love about the money block because remember our ground rules? There's no judgment, there's no moral implications. We are just going to use this time block in a way that reduces stress for you and that helps you get on top of something that's probably really bothering you subconsciously, okay? And all we're gonna do, I love this because the money block isn't about anything other than creating boundaries and power around money in just two hours. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna follow the advice of the world-renowned financial experts that have been on the Mel Robbins Podcast. We're gonna link to all of their incredible episodes so that you can watch them if you want to and really focus in on the specific tactics and, and advice. I'm talking about world-renowned experts like David Bach, Morgan Housel, and Tiffany Aliche. And Tiffany Aliche, in particular, is very specific about what she wants you to do. But all of them say the same thing. Are you ready? And this is what the money block is for. You can't get control of your money unless you first know where it's going, and that's all we're doing with the money block. That's it. From one to three, we're gonna figure out where's your money going, and then you know what you and I are gonna do? We are gonna block access that people have to your money that they shouldn't have access to because you don't realize how many people are sucking money from you. So how about we use the money block to just put up some boundaries, to just see where our money is going so you can be like, [snaps finger] "I don't think so. I think I can do better than this." And so here's the first thing you're gonna do in the money block. From one to three, you're gonna print out your monthly bank statement. You get bonus points if you print out two monthly bank statements. And you are also going to print out all of your credit card statements. I'm talking the charge cards. I'm talking store charge cards. Whatever they are, I want you to print all that out and take a deep breath. Nobody's gonna make you wrong. I'm telling you to do this because this is what every single financial expert recommends that you and I do. If you do nothing else but print out your monthly bank statement and your credit card statements... And by the way, it might take you two hours because you may not know all your logins. You may not know which credit cards you have. Just taking two hours to get on top of that, you win. You're amazing. And the reason why this is so important and why I want you to print it out, okay, is because then you're gonna take a look at what is going in my bank account and what is coming out. What are the charges on my credit card? And here's what I want you to do. We're gonna take that highlighter, right, and we're gonna highlight where your money's coming out because I think you're gonna be really surprised by how many little amounts of money and big amounts of money are seeping out of your bank account every single month, charges and fees you didn't realize somebody's sucking from you. If you see charges that you don't wanna pay anymore or you're like, "What the hell is this?" or, "Why am I paying for that?" or, "What is this for?" highlight that sucker, okay? Because if you have leftover time at the end of this money block, which is from one to three, you get extra points for canceling those things that are coming out on a reoccurring basis. I guarantee you, there are things coming out of your bank account and being charged to your credit card that you don't even realize you're paying for. You may even have a credit card that you have not used in two years. In fact, I overheard my father on the phone when I was visiting him last weekend, and he was on the phone with a credit card company, a really big one. He was like, "Hi there. I'm calling because I received two new credit cards in the mail with different account numbers, both of which charged me a credit card fee for opening up the credit card. And I believe that that happened because I spoke to two different, uh, representatives who I would imagine each opened up a different account, so they got credit for it. And I want to cancel the one with the higher interest rate, and I want to make sure the records show that it was canceled at the cardholder's request so this doesn't ding my credit." And I was standing in the hallway like, "Damn. Go, Dad." And then I thought to myself, "Do I... W- how many... Do I have credit cards that I don't know of? Like, is this h- " Like, I once had a credit card that I didn't realize had renewed. I had canceled it, and somehow in the cancellation of the credit card, the renewal came, like, within 48 hours. Because this is the other thing you're gonna find. When you print all this stuff out, especially credit cards, you're gonna be like, "Oh, wait a minute. This is about to renew, which means they're about to hit me with the annual fee. I don't even use this thing. I need to cancel it at my request now or I need to just, like, do s- I need to figure out what to do instead of just letting this stuff run me over." Every single person on our team at 143 Studios, every single one of them said, "There is a streaming service on my bank account or my credit card that I meant to cancel." I bet you have that too. You know, you sign up for something to watch the Olympics or to stream that big event or to watch that movie that just came out, and you're like, "Okay. Well, I'm just gonna sign up for this streaming service once, and I'm gonna do the trial offer, and then I'm gonna cancel." And then you forget to cancel, and then next thing you know, you're getting billed $49 a month every month. This is how you're gonna use this-Time block. Because this issue's gonna come up over and over and over again. That free trial you signed up for, that thing that you returned that you didn't get credit for, the stuff that's coming out. And here's the thing, if 3:00 rolls around and this third block, the money block, is now over, just get a folder and put these highlighted things, make sure you Sharpie out any account numbers. You don't want that rolling around on a printout. But put all these in a folder, and now you can stick that in your purse or your backpack, and when you have a lunch break, when you're sitting in traffic, now these are the calls you can make. Do you see how this one Life Admin Day now sets you up to use pockets of time effectively to set yourself up for success in the long term? And that is our third block. Don't you love that? I didn't make you do any budgeting. I didn't make you do anything complicated. All I asked you to do in your Life Admin Day is print out your bank statements for a month or two, print out every credit card statement that you can find so you can see the interest that you're paying, you can see when this thing renews, you can compare it all. And then I just want you to look and ask yourself, "Where's my money going? And where are the holes and the leaks I'm gonna plug right now?" And simply highlighting it now empowers you to be able to do that at any moment you got 5 to 10 minutes to make the call and cancel whatever it is that you're paying for that you don't want. And there's also so many services that it can help you do this that are free, so you don't have to do this alone. I just love this block. And now that we're on a roll, 'cause you're like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Get out of my bank account. I'm taking my money back, man. I know where my money is going," now we're gonna move on to block number four. Block number four is just like the money block, only we're gonna do it with email. I love this. We are going to unsubscribe from all the emails and all the apps you don't use. I mean, just, just think about that for a minute. You're gonna take an hour from 3:00 to 4:00 PM, the email block. We are gonna [laughs] get out of here. Get out of here. Br- delete, delete, delete, delete. I want you to unsubscribe from emails and apps that you don't use. I want you to unsubscribe, and I want you to cancel apps that you don't wanna pay for. And I want you to clear out the clutter, the junk, the reoccurring garbage that's in your inbox. Because every time something hits your inbox that is meaningless, it takes your attention away from something important. And there's... Even if you're the kind of person that can just, "Oh, I can just ignore it," you know, whatever, it still drains you. And there's something crazy l- just empowering when you're like, "Unsubscribe. You don't get access to me. Unsubscribe. You don't get access to me. I'm tired of receiving this email." And I felt bad about unsubscribing, because it was the, you know, m- the mom of my daughter's middle school friend that has started a Substack, and somehow I've ended up on this email list that I don't wanna be on, and I don't want her to see that I've unsubscribed, 'cause I'm the ki- Unsubscribe. Let her. Let her be disappointed you do not wanna read her thesis on sourdough that she's sending you every week. Let her be disappointed. You are taking your life, your inbox, and your power back. And as we were talking about this as a team, uh, our, our executive producer, Tracy, who is like the poster child, um, it's turning out, for needing a Life Admin Day. Sorry to throw you under the bus, Tracy, but all the stuff that you're not taking care of is making me feel like I'm a little bit more on top of my [laughs] life. Not a competition. Wait, I just broke a ground rule. I said there was no shame and no moral judgment. And I, and I know you can take it, l- uh, Trace, and you've been laughing along, but I just wanna share something, because it's been so awesome to talk about and to create this, this episode with our team. Because everybody has so many stories about the clutter that is blocking your life and your brain. And as we were talking about the email block, as we were just talking about it, Tracy started unsubscribing. Check out the list of things. A florist shop in New Orleans that she ordered flowers for a friend from five years ago. She was on their newsletter list. The gym that she belonged to in high school. That was like 13 years ago. Still on the newsletter list. Uh, don't even get me started when you do a really good thing, and you donate to a nonprofit or a political cause, and then you somehow have your email distributed to some super PAC or the national version of the nonprofit. I realize you're doing good in the world, but dear God, do not give my name to everybody, because now you're gonna have 500 emails from a cause that you were once excited about. Now you're like, "I want to die if you send me another email." What was the other one that you had, Trace, that was crazy?