I sat down to some tedious admin the other day, the sort that requires dates of birth and NI numbers and photos of passports and I wanted to lie down on the floor and drink white wine directly from the bottle (though this is not an unusual mental state). THEN I remembered that about six months ago I had made a folder on my computer called “Official docs”.
I got up off the floor and put a cork in the bottle and rummaged for it and oh… my… god. At some point - I swear I do not remember doing this - I took photos of everyone’s passport and put them in this file. And then, I took photos of everyone’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE and the car’s V5 and my wedding certificate and in a Word document wrote down all the relevant information from everyone’s passport. In this folder there is also a picture of a recent council tax bill and a picture of not just my but also my husband’s driving licence.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When had I done this? It filtered back to me dimly like a half-forgotten dream.
Do you have this file? If not, start one. You, too, will forget that you did it in six months’ time.
Meanwhile, when I was 24 a peer told me that he was sitting next to a reporter who kept a spreadsheet of all his journalism contacts so that when he needed a tame lawyer or a tech PR guy or an expert on butterflies or nutrition for a quote, there were the details right there.
And he didn’t, like we did, have look up all the pieces we had written on Lexis Nexis to see who TF we spoke to last time then rake through our emails to find their stupid contact address. “That’s a really good idea,” I thought. But didn’t start doing it. Today, 18 years later, I started a document to do just that.
Better late than never?
How about you? What is your proudest piece of admin that works hard for you? Could it work hard for us? Please share it with the group in the handy box below.
Rather depressing, and not sure if it really falls under the admin umbrella, but after suffering a bereavement it meant a LOT to me when friends remembered particularly difficult dates. So now when one of my friends loses say a parent (which is happening horribly often now I’m in my 40s) I put in a diary reminder for a year’s time so I can send a ‘thinking of xx on the anniversary of your loss’ type message. I also keep a list so on Xmas day I take a few minutes to send out ‘thinking of you on your first Xmas without xx’ and similar on Mothers/Fathers Day. It’s not til you lose someone close that you realise how much that small kindness helps.
As a privacy/cybersecurity lawyer and also a mum, I'm reading this like yes, amazing ideas BUT please for god's sake make sure that the place you are putting literally ALL the information anyone would ever need to take over your identity/drain your bank account/cause insane amounts of damage is secure