Life Admin When Life Turns Upside Down: A Book Review (Of Sorts)

Prof. Elizabeth Emens is a law professor, a parent, and the author of Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More - a book published in 2019. Life Admin made its way into our stack of “life improvement to-reads” (not to be confused with our stack of educational pedagogy to-reads, our parenting to-reads, our for-enjoyment to-reads, our legal education to-reads, or our political and non-fiction to-reads). As we face luxurious 10-30 minutes between Zoom classes, Zoom faculty meetings, Zoom student counseling, and Zoom parent-teacher council, we wondered in the context of a COVID Cares academic symposium: what might Life Admin have to teach us, here and now, in the midst of this chaos? This book review is generous and practical. Prof. Emens did not intend her advice to be delivered during a pandemic, but we suspect the challenges we and our caretaker colleagues in academia face right now are not new—they are simply exacerbated by the challenges of 2020. This review of Life Admin distils the book down to its most basic themes relevant to us “Super Doer” lawyer and professor types who juggle the constant mental load of service, teaching, scholarship, and parenting demands. It brings comfort in numbers and shared experience, we hope, and some tips for readers who have never been more overwhelmed by the admin of life than right now.