Welcome to Administry Weekly - a newsletter for the pastors, leaders, and admin ninjas keeping things afloat. Whether you’ve been gifted with administration or you're just in survival mode, this is your weekly dose of holy order. Practical tools, thoughtful reflections, and a little solidarity to carry you through the chaos.
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Admin is for everyone, and there's no escaping it.
Whatever age or stage of life, there is an admin overhead tax we pay on the life we inhabit and the work we do.
I like the term admin overhead tax (thanks, Cal Newport) because it reframes admin as a category of work with its own weight, one that can be reduced or increased, but never fully avoided.
And in 2025, that tax feels high.
I see it everywhere: in churches, ministries, not-for-profits.
I see it in homes, too. Whether you're single, married, or raising kids, the flood of paperwork and emails, the endless logins, passwords, and financial tasks - it’s relentless.
Take the last six weeks at my son’s school. We’ve had Book Week with not one, but two dress-up days (Pyjama Day and Character Day). Two weeks of daily swimming, capped off with Swim Survivor Day (also in pyjamas), which triggered a mountain of laundry and a checklist taped to the back of the front door. Still forgot a spare pair of undies one day.
Then: “Don’t forget cash for the Father’s Day Stall!” “Fill out the Dental School visit form!” And tomorrow: “Zoo day! No plastic in the lunchbox, pack an umbrella, wear your sports uniform!” And the finale…last day of term… Footy Dress Up Day! Fortunately the Western Bulldogs scarf my child got for his first birthday still fits at age eight.
The messages, the forms, the logistics… it’s peak admin.
And that’s not even counting the rest: Father’s Day itself, my son’s birthday, and planning a caravan trip to Coober Pedy.
All this while working in an admin role that demands high capacity across multiple projects and areas of responsibility. Recently, I found myself completely overwhelmed by email, by our project management tool, by files. I counted over 16 active projects (yes, I know Cal says three… but they multiply), and a backlog of more than 50 tasks.
And here’s the twist: I love working in admin. I’m passionate about workload management. I’ve read Getting Things Done, Work Clean, Essentialism, A World Without Email, Four Thousand Weeks, Effortless, Deep Work, Slow Productivity, Margin, The PARA Method. I know the principles. I know I need to keep active projects low, work clean, do the essential.
It doesn’t matter if you’re more like Little Miss Organised or Mr Messy, if you don’t have a custom-built system that works for you, and maintain that system, the overwhelm will come.
Fortunately, I know how to hit the reset button. Having lots of initiative, saying yes to too many things and procrastinating due to perfectionism has got me in this situation many times before.
The reason why I want to write about this weekly is, our admin systems have to shift as our responsibilities grow and change. New challenges pop up and new tools are being built every day.
We need space to reflect, recalibrate, and reimagine how we steward the work behind the work.
From next week, I’ll start sharing some practical ways to hit the reset button and build admin systems that actually work (even when life gets messy).
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Well done Rache! I just bought you a coffee! ❤️
You strongly came to mind this week! This must be why!