{"id":2258,"date":"2024-08-27T15:11:09","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T19:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2258"},"modified":"2024-08-28T14:14:41","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T18:14:41","slug":"word-of-the-week-administrivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/2024\/08\/27\/word-of-the-week-administrivia\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Administrivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Milton<\/a>Sad to say, but I didn’t invent this word. I have used it for years, thinking (wrongly!) that I coined this portmanteau word. Others have long had similar notions.<\/p>\n

Today I ran across this sentence in a white paper from McKinsey and Company<\/a>, “Middle managers confront endless administrivia\u2014and in many cases, burnout.” I get all their briefs on generative AI. I’d prefer to leave shuffling and sorting files, as well as attending most meetings, to an AI, so I see the sentence both as proof I did not coin the term and as vindication: administrative work can often be thankless, but some of it is merely trivial.<\/p>\n

What surprised me most involved first use: 1937, in an ethics journal, with this sentence cited in the OED entry<\/a>, “He recognized that grave problems of public policy were neglected because legislative time was so largely taken up with what might be called administrivia.” That encapsulates the dilemma of our word: important work needs to be done, but in the parlance of office-speak today, too often we “get into the weeds” instead of thinking strategically.<\/p>\n

I fear administrivia is rising faster than carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Consider the OED’s usage-frequency chart. The image blurred but the red line goes one way: right up, a sevenfold increase since 1930.<\/p>\n

So think about what you can do to reduce administrivia and get on with important work while at work.<\/p>\n

\"OED<\/a>This blog will\u00a0 continue all year, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image Source: Touch not Milton’s red Swingline stapler! Mike Judge’s superb Gen-X comedy, Office Space.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sad to say, but I didn’t invent this word. I have used it for years, thinking (wrongly!) that I coined this portmanteau word. Others have long had similar notions. Today I ran across this sentence in a white paper from McKinsey and Company, “Middle managers confront endless administrivia\u2014and in many cases, burnout.” I get all … Continue reading Word of the Week! Administrivia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6904,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87405,87415,1027,40197,2517],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-portmanteau-words","category-technoculture","category-vocabulary","category-workplace-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2266,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions\/2266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}