North Melbourne local teams up with close friend to launch book

By Brendan Rees and Zephania Thangam

A North Melbourne resident and her close friend have celebrated the launch of their new book, which offers a practical guide in “cleaning up your admin load”.

Working mums Mia Northrop and Dinah Rowe-Roberts, who coach, write, speak, and conduct workshops about life admin, released their first book together, ‘Life Admin Hacks’ which is about reducing your mental load and streamlining your life.

“I'd always wanted to write a book, it's been a dream since I was in primary school. So it was totally thrilling to get the green light from the publisher,” Ms Northrop of North Melbourne said.

The duo run Time and Grace, which helps individuals and employees transform their life admin from chaos to a state of control and calm.

They authors, who met in high school, said they always wanted to write a book and decided to launch a podcast in 2018 to help build an audience and their credibility.

The podcast aimed to help people find more spare time, money, peace of mind and household harmony by making life admin less overwhelming and time consuming.

By 2020, just before the pandemic hit, they mapped out writing a book and pitched it to a publisher before using lockdowns and remote learning with their kids as “a great distraction” to get the pages off the ground.

Ms Northrop said they knew publishing would be competitive but were confident the book “would solve a real pain point and be a unique resource,” adding “There's nothing like it in Australia or elsewhere.”

“Harper Collins immediately saw its value as the team had all experienced the stress of life admin first hand.”

The book was launched at the new Readings store at the Emporium in March, with the store busy enough to sell out of copies.

“After all the effort of going through the publishing process, it was wonderful to be with family, friends and fans in person and sign books,” they said.

Caption: Working mums Mia Northrop and Dinah Rowe-Roberts celebrate their new book, ‘Life Admin Hacks’