Procrastination nation: 71% of Brits are putting off life admin – leaving them worse off and stressed out

Some 71% of Brits admit to putting off ‘life admin’ tasks – ending up out of pocket, stressed out and arguing with their partners as a result, research has found.

People in Northern Ireland are the biggest procrastinators, with 86% putting off things or their to-do list, compared to just 61% in Wales and 59% in the South East.

The survey of more than 2,000 adults, carried out by household money-saving tool Nous.co, found just under half (47%) of people are putting off more than five tedious tasks, and 8% have more than 15 pieces of life admin languishing on their to-do list.

The life admin duty people are most likely to ignore is renewing their broadband contract, with more than a quarter (28%) putting it off – a mistake that can leave households £300 worse off every year. 

The life admin burden is hitting people in the wallet, with more than a quarter (26%) overpaying for bills and services because they’ve been putting off finding a fair deal.

A further 34% were stressed out because of their to-do lists, with a clear gender split emerging:  41% of women said they were stressed out by the tasks they’d been putting off, compared to 28% of men.

Procrastination is also causing problems in relationships: 16% of men and 7% of women said they’d argued with their partners about it.

Greg Marsh, household finance expert and CEO of Nous.co, said: “Life admin jobs – like sorting your bills and phoning providers – are boring and stressful. No wonder so many of us end up putting them off for months.

“Unfortunately, our broadband, energy and mobile providers know this – and use it to their advantage. They rely on the fact that we don’t shop around, and sneak up prices in the hope that we won’t take action.

“This is clearly unfair – and it’s why we started Nous. We typically save customers hours of effort and hundreds of pounds by handling the headache of managing their bills for them.”

The most commonly cited reasons for putting off life admin were that it’s too boring (38%), too time-consuming (35%) and too stressful (25%).

A large proportion of people are guilty of putting off tasks for significant periods of time – 40% have at least one life admin job that they’ve put off for three months or more. And 5% of adults have at least one life admin task that they’ve put off for more than a year. 

—

‍

Procrastination nation: % of people putting off life admin tasks by region

‍

10 most put off life admin tasks

‍

Main reasons for putting off life admin