Life admin anxiety is real here's how you can beat it

Ever feel overwhelmed by ostensibly small tasks to the point where they hang over you for months at a time? You're not alone. Helen Coffey asks the experts how we can break free of the debilitating procrastination cycle of our personal lives

- Helen Coffey

There’s a story that has haunted me for years. Seven years, to be precise – because, much like the bad luck that comes from breaking a mirror, that’s the amount of time it takes for your credit record to be scrubbed clean of late payments (or “delinquencies”, as they are rather extravagantly known).

This story doesn’t involve me being profligate or bad with money. It involves me being defeated by my one true nemesis: life admin. When I was in my late twenties, I moved out of a shared flat. All of the utility bills were paid out of a bank account in my name. When I left, I asked my old housemates to “sort it out”.

Part of me knew, deep down, that I should take matters into my own hands rather than trust three random women I’d met through Spareroom.co.uk: cancel all the direct debits; shut down the now defunct account. But whenever I thought about it, my head felt hot and fuzzy. I’d need to find letters and reference numbers, I’d have to call up and sit on hold listening to terrible music or fill in online forms. Writing it down now, these things sound like the most minor of irritants. Back then, they felt like the most major of stumbling blocks.

So I just did… nothing. Ignored it, never looked at the account again, and moved on with my life. Until, that is, years later, when it came time to apply for a mortgage and I realised my credit score was in the toilet. Unbeknownst to me, I owed Santander thousands of pounds. The bills had continued to come out of the account, even though there was no money being paid into it; the unarranged overdraft got maxed out and started accruing substantial interest.

I cleared out my savings paying it all back – those former flatmates were long gone, lost somewhere in the sprawling expanse of the city – but there remained a black mark against my name regardless.