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Book Review: Time Management for System Administrators
By Mike | March 23, 2006
This book is currently changing my life.
Seriously.
(Ok, ok, come back to me on Monday and see if I’m still possesed of the vigor and enthusiasm of the newly converted – I think I may be!)
Title: Time Management for System Administrators
Author: Thomas A. Limoncelli
Author Website: www.EverythingSysAdmin.com
ISBN: 0-596-00783-3
Alternate Media: Google Video
Buy it on: Amazon.com
I know, I know, there are thousands of time management books out there, and none of those have taken either – what makes this one so special?
Honestly? It’s targeted to me.
Limoncelli (and, no, I have no idea how to pronounce that) defines the whole scope and mission of the book by identifying that in System Administration, chaos is going to happen – and then telling you how to handle it the best ways possible.
In all seriousness, I’ve been moderately to severely unhappy with my job lately. That’s no secret to my friends, family, and anyone who reads this blog. I’ve recently tried to reset my perspective, but still wasn’t quite getting there. Anxiety, exhaustion, frustration, you name it – the whole 9 yards. One of the first things Limoncelli covers in this book is that most of these problems are caused by trying to keep track of too many things in your head. His approach is to quit worrying, and write things down, thereby freeing yourself from actively thinking about them. I know, this seems like a very elementary and basic time management priniciple, but as somewhat who’s been historically been fairly high strung, and with a fairly good memory, didn’t really think needed to write things down – this concept of mentally liberating yourself from worrying about something by writing it down is incredibly liberating!
Once you write things down – then not only are you liberated from worrying about them, you’re also liberated from feeling overwhelmed and not knowing which way to move because all obstacles seem overwhelming. Writing them down allows prioritization (with the help of some exercises, if you need them) which then frees you to ACT!
I kid you not, I have been more productive in the past two days, than in the past two weeks. The main thing I’ve done is assigned myself a task list in my e-mail program (I’m currently using Lotus Notes but similar functionality exists in Microsoft Outlook or your dayplanner of choice) and am forcing myself to work through every single one of my items, every day. I’ve mentally given myself permission to not complete, or finish, each task item everyday, just to make forward progress – even if the “progress” is reviewing the current status and continuing to wait for the next milestone to come to fruition (in a productive way.) Believe it or not, this is really working for me.
If you’re not in the trenches with SA work, you may not get his perspective. But, if you’re like me – this perspective is VITAL – because it makes things relevant to my lifestyle and identifies other things – which work for other people – that may fail for me.
I loved this book, and am obnoxiously promoting it to anyone who has the misfortune of being cornered by me.
MO’B – highly efficient!
Topics: Books, Website Technical | 1 Comment »
March 24th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Don’t they teach you this in 6th grade when you start having homework? :-)