# Dealing with Administrative Stress

By Administrative Stress, I refer to the stress caused in dealing with filling forms, applications, talking to bureaucracies, and so on. This has caused me a lot of stress in the past and I've lost several opportunities because of my aversion in dealing with this. Over time I've become better at it. I still have a long way to go, but I've made progress. So here is a short list of strategies I use to overcome this stress/fear and I'm sharing in the hope that some people might find it useful. Feel free add your tips and strategies in the comments:

1\. If you can afford to **pay someone else** to do the work for you and someone else can indeed do it, then do so. 

2\. **Breathe**. It's OK. Focus on your breathing. You can get over this. Keep telling yourself that you're stronger then some  puny application forms. Take it one step at a time.

3\. **Don't catastophize.** Much of the fear comes from imagining situations where you missed one little detail and therefore lost a huge opportunity or lost a lot of money or got into trouble and so on. This is textbook [catastrophizing](http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/what-is-catastrophizing/). Tell yourself that millions of people do this kind of work everyday and that you are no worse than them. In fact, millions might even be filling out the exact form that you are filling out (in the case of taxes or visa applications). Anna Salamon mentions in the [Checklist of Rationality Habits](/lw/fc3/checklist_of_rationality_habits/) that she managed convince herself of the safety of the wire-guided fall at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas by imagining twice the population of her college doing the jump and surviving. Similarly, you can imagine maybe your entire city filling out the application and no one getting into significant trouble. Also, you can use simple mindfulness exercises to focus on the present.

4\. **Use Checklists**. I cannot overstate the importance of this. Write down every single thing you need to finish and process it one at a time. Write down the deadline at the head of your checklist and keep that date steady in mind.

5. **If you need to make appointments, make them early.** I'm currently applying for a German visa. I kept postponing making a Visa appointment because I thought I'd get one easily, based on my experience of applying for a Canadian visa. But as it turns out I was wrong and now the appointment date is uncomfortably close to my date of travel. Making early appointments gives you a clear and comfortable deadline before which you need to finish things and also leaves you room for errors or delays you might encounter. In fact, if there are appointments necessary, they should be at the head of your checklist as well.

6\. **If you feel certain about something or uncertain about something: check.** If you are certain, make the belief pay rent. If you are uncertain, you have to vanquish the confusion. I once couldn't take the GRE exam because I felt certain that a particular form of ID (my drivers' license) was sufficient to take the test, but as it turned out, in my country only a national passport is valid. I lost a lot of money and time. So if you feel sure about something, be extra-sure.

7\. **Don't take it personally.** Bureaucracies aren't deliberately evil. They are impersonal. They exist and you have to deal with them. In the end, if you do not complete the requirements, you will lose. For example, a Chinese friend of mine considers it very demeaning that she has to apply for a Hong Kong visa in order to visit people in Hong Kong, even though Hong Kong is officially part of China. This has kept her from visiting people she loves who live in Hong Kong. I think in the end she is not winning. 

8\. **Be courteous.** This is a no-brainer. When talking or sending emails to officials, secretaries and so forth, you can be persistent but always be courteous. Remember that the person you are talking to is not out to get you. He or she is simply doing their job.

9\. **Bureaucracies can be flexible.** Smaller the organization, more flexible they can be. For example, when I was applying to grad schools, all the schools had on their websites seemingly very tight deadlines by which I had to get all the application material in. One of the professors who was writing me recommendation letters was travelling and wouldn't write me a letter within the deadline for a few schools. This sent me into panic and I was considering not applying to these schools. But I emailed the application secretary and she was more than willing to extend the deadline for that recommendation letter. I sent the letter almost 2-3 weeks late and it was totally fine. So when in doubt, ask. If no dice, ask again. At the worst, you are going to get a polite no. What's wrong in trying.

10\. **If you need to procure documents from secondary sources, do it early.** Because in almost every procurement exercise, there're inevitable delays. 

11\. **Use friends.** If you can get a friend who is doing/has done the same application as you are, then do it with him/her. This is how I always get my taxes done. I have a friend who actually enjoys figuring out the gory details of the American tax code. And he always knows the answer to confusing points.

11a. If not, then if you can get a friend to simply sit with you when you're doing the application, then that helps a lot. You can chat, you can complain about the pain, you can talk about something in the application that is confusing you and so on.

11b. Further, tell friends that you're doing this application and it needs to be done by so and so date. This means that people will bring it up in everyday conversation: "How's that application going?" and this creates social pressure to make sure that you are doing it.

Please share your strategies in the comments!