Admin for Days : YouTube’s Watch later-list, a digital Commonplace idea and other [digital] clean up tasks

I am stuck with doing admin tasks, or at least that’s how I feel right now. Like my entire life is just admin, admin, admin. Maybe that’s why I sounded cranky in my last post, but brace yourself, haha, today it’s worse… LOL.

I might have been doing admin for days, weeks even. Just boring computer stuff, moving files around and trying to bring order to my chaotic end-of-the-year mess all through January. I meant to sit down to write out some ideas for the new year (goal-esc ideas and thoughts) before Christmas, but when that didn’t happen (because I simply could not find any inspiration) I let it all go and rested. It was absolutely lovely.

Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don’t you know that no one alive
Can always be an angel?
When things go wrong I seem to be bad.

But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

I did not think about producing, making, writing, documenting or keeping up with anything. I just rested from all of it, most of all from my own life. I went to my parent’s and stayed there for several days around Christmas, and then came back home for a bit to be alone and read books, and then went back to them after New Year’s Eve to stay another week! Mom and I were quite creative together, and it was lovely. I will blog our makings soon, but not today.

What is Admin Day then?

Admin, huh? That is what I call administral tasks like clearing the table (to be able to get to the real work) and digital clean up of phone, computer, photos, inspirations saved and so on. Cleaning, filing, puttering away with the mundane – all those small tasks that you just need to sit down and get done. The things that if you don’t churn your way through them daily, you at least need to do once in a while – so you don’t drown in your own debris. I started calling it “admin” a few years ago, after learning that youtuber Michelle B had what she calls Admin days, somethings she shares in quite a few videos and swears by (they’re kind of like a reset of your regular life in a way). I should be more intentional with mine, and do them more often, preferably weekly I guess, but when I haven’t I feel like I’m drowning…

YouTube’s Watch Later List.

The admin I have been doing have been mostly silly busy-keeping things. For example, in November I noticed that my YouTube “to watch later”-list, a great function of YouTube that I really appreciate, was crazy. I had over 190 videos “to watch later”, some from the beginning of last-last year. I decided to clean it up a bit, which was slow and also very enjoyable most of the time. I removed videos I was no longer interested in, and started watching the rest. I saw most of them and removed some half-watched.

I get into so many rabbit holes of New Interests through a year that not even I can keep up, haha.

This is the reason I save so many to my watch-later-list. I search for different topics, then get recommended interesting videos that I will not find again if I don’t add them straight away of course. So that’s how the list gets that crazy. Finding is quicker than watching or keeping up with, as always. I use YouTube to learn about new software functionality that I use, and how I can use all the envelopes I own in junk journaling. I learn how to use the Cricut better and other random things. Mostly I am entertained and inspired though. I’m inspired when people share their Stalogy journals, their colorful sketchbooks, the state of their creative corner or studio, people showing how they paint abstracts or create postcards or create e-books that lets the content float in your reader.

I love YouTube, and hope it doesn’t change to the worse anytime soon. There “shorts” (reels repurposed mostly from Instgram and TikTok) are not a favorite of mine though, but they’ve been easier to avoid getting sucked into on YouTube than on instagram or Facebook, which I mostly have tried to stay away from. I like horizontal videos on YouTube I’m already there to watch “real” (edited) videos. I prefer voice over or talk over quick musically timed tidbits. As a creator myself I appreciate the effort, cost and skill that goes into good videos a lot, and share thumbs up and comments when ever I can. And today, as sit here in candle light with the silence surrounding me in the living room, and I am writing about all of this, my “to watch later-list on YouTube is down to 52 videos (and about 8 of those I added new last week). I think I will try to keep it smallish like that for a while.

What else have I been messing around with? The backend of the blog of course, updating a few old posts at a time, feeling like it’s the never ending task from hell, but also seeing blog posts I’d forgotten about and finding so much inspiration from the archives. I have written about many different things through the years – and I am so happy to have done so here under my own domain and in WordPress, so that it’s all still here and my own to tinker with. I still love blogging and the way you can sort the information you add into the database system that is a blog. Love it.

I also finally decided to download a computer cleaning program and give it a try. My HD has been on red (overfilled) for several months now, and that’s not good because it makes it slower and more likely to freeze or break, but I couldn’t remove anything because the big problem was a stupid windows-backup-file that had been tampered with. The system would not let me delete it, and every time I did try to do something about it I was told I couldn’t. I’d google for a tutorial on how to be able to delete files (files I knew was not in use but that the system told me was “integral” to Windows, which I knew was BS) but the tutorials to do this on your own are about twenty five bullet points long and all warn you to not temper with the files they tell you that you must change manually – or your computer could stop working… So very frustrating! Anyway, I downloaded a free software called Advanced uninstaller Pro and it seems to have done the trick. Finally! Oh my gosh, this makes me so happy you guys. So happy! I started with deleting a software that could no longer be uninstalled the regular way, and then the new uninstaller found excess and unnecessary files and suggested we could delete them – and did so. Easily. What a relief. I was starting to think I’d need a new computer, or that I’d have to bring this one in to ask someone else to fix it – and that’s just not (possible) in the budget. Now my computer runs smoother and it will have to keep working hard for me a few years more. Yay!

Because of all that, I haven’t edited or rendered any new videos for YouTube in three months. I think that the clean HD will make it a lot quicker and easier, so I’ll try to get back to it in February. I am sad that I took a very unscheduled hiatus from YouTube, but now you know why at least.

Looking at the photo files

Maybe “photo files” ie photography deserves a blog post of its own, later on? My current system simply consist of folders by year, and then dates and it still works great for me. But I want to be better at making backups, and adding some meta-data to my photos directly. Names of people, places and maybe even the “why” of taking that photo at times, And adding tags is so helpful down the line when I want to find a photo that has “shadows” in it, or maybe even all the “selfies” from 2024.

I wish I knew of a way to make sure I keep my backup-files the same and similar to the ones on the computer, that I keep editing and tagging and moving around, in an easy way. If you know of a way to do that, let me know. I just want the backup to look the same.

For digital photography with a camera, storing is straightforward enough. It is the mess that arrives from the phone that I need to sort more often. It comes into the computer via Dropbox synching, and I need that so I can remove stuff of the phone. My phone would’ve filled up 100 times if I didn’t remove video and photos every now and then, and I also would be overwhelmed trying to find something if it was just on the phone. Instead I sort photos into date folders, and all the screen grabs and saved files elsewhere. It works, but I do wish it was a bit more automated really. That’s it for phone photo admin, for now.

If you don’t do a digital clean up every week or month, at last once a year I think you simply must go around and check in on your “systems”. I feel like I am constantly trying new things, list apps and ideas and such, but then I don’t really love it. But I might just settle for one for saving quotes:

Current method of digital Commonplace idea

This is what I have in place right now that is actually working for me. For quotes found online, I have decided to stop searching for a tool that can do it all for me. If you want to save a snippet of a text (ie “a quote”) from any site, you really have to have the article in that app already and I rarely do. I read blogs in Feedly or in a browser, I read stuff on Substack (in the app or in a browser), and the tools don’t work like that. Instead I have decided to simply keep a document handy on the phone that I can also access from elsewhere (laptop, other computers, any browser) if I’m logged in.

I named a document “Quotes 2025” in Notion and have a shortcut for it on the phone. In Notion you can create elaborate databases, and I have one set up for adding in quotes where i can tag it and add in source, author name and so on but as I tend not to use it, it’s not working very well. You can also just create documents in Notion, so that’s what I am doing now. I also have a similar Notion document called “Noted” for writing or blog post ideas, lists, or anything else that I need to jot down/copy-paste in quickly. These two documents are so handy, and a perfect and quick way to save my own words and other’s on the go. With the quote document I also need to go back to copy the url/source, so I can link or reference where I got it from later, of course. But now that I have figured out what to do with my snippets I think that’s workable. It is a digital Commonplace book in away, but instead of having to go look for a pen and my actual Commonplace notebook and painstakingly copy down all the words, I just copy-paste, save source and then I’m done. I can sort it out, print it or even hand-write it if I feel like it – or decide where to use – it later on. Sometimes easy is the best way. You could use any digital document tool this way, of course, but I like Notion. I think the most important thing is that it’s easy to access the actual place where you want to paste something in, not to have to search for it or open an app to then find the document.

Other overwhelming places has been my inbox, and the struggle keeps on being a struggle for me. I am just bad at email, period. I’ll try to do better, getting back sooner, making decisions quicker, making sure you know I see you and know your worries and answer your questions. But gosh, it’s so hard! I don’t know why, but every January I aim to be a better person. I’ve set more sorting the inbox rules, to get the newsletters and automatic pings out of the inbox straight away. And then next up is just to sit down, sort through everything and aim for Inbox Zero again. But it’s a February task, because today I wrote all this, and now I’ve forgotten why I decided to write all this down instead of the 2025 goals and ideas blog post that I wanted to write and post before January ends… I’ll just hit publish and move on I think. Hopefully someone out there will find some of this semi-interesting or helpful…

Baby, sometimes I’m so carefree
With a joy that’s hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that all I have do is worry
And then you’re bound to see my other side.

But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

– Nina Simone (lyrics)

Conclusion (not written by AI): Go through your “digital storing systems” what ever they are. Make sure you can fit new stuff in! Clean them up, restart your yearly lists, clear out the debris of life so that you can make room for the new fresh year (yes, even if the year is already a month old). January’s made for this kind of shit, because who wants to go outside anyway? I declare January Admin month, hope that helps in case you haven’t gotten started with the year yet. xo

You might also want to check out these from the Studio iHanna Shop