Sneak Peak: www.TomOnTime.com
Psst... I'm working on a new site. I'm taking all my time management videos, chopping them into bite-sized, topic-specific, stories, and putting them on a new web site. I only have a few videos up so far, but I'd like to start getting feedback (we have 40+ videos on their way). What do you think?What I want in a mobile task management software
The biggest impediment to recording a todo item is that it is inconvenient. I use that excuse to tell myself, "oh, i'll write it down later". Later never comes.
The fewer clicks to the "add a task" prompt, the less likely I can give myself that excuse.
90% of time management is mental.
That's why I recommend paper (no boot-up time), and PDAs like the original Palm that make it very fast (minimal clicks) to write down an idea.
A related excuse happens when I'm in the NYC subway. With no internet connectivity (2G, 3G, or WiFi), any great idea I have on the subway is destined to be not recorded, and often forgotten, if the app I'm using requires the network.
What would be optimal? A "record a task" button right on the phone. You would press-and-hold the button, it would wake up and say "Recording". You would then say your task and use speech-to-text technology to transcribe the idea. If the speech-to-text server isn't reachable, it should hold the audio clip until it can be reached; possibly doing the translation in the background.
The on-screen or physical keyboard should be available too, of course, but what I really want is a super smart, voice activated, task recorder.
The Checklist Manifesto
Atul appeared on WNYC's The Leanard Lopate Show today. You can listen to the entire show here.
He's speaking at 8:15pm at the 92nd Street Y in NYC tomorrow:
In his most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande reveals the surprising power of an ordinary checklist that can save lives and improve the way in which we behave. Gawande is a MacArthur Fellow, a general surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. His other best-selling books include Better and Complications.I've bought a ticket and can't wait to see him speak.
Make Lists. Not Too Much. Mostly Do.
TM4SA encourages people to make lists. I've met readers that have gone too far. Here's a great article from Grad Hacker about reaching balance:
Feeling vindicated
The latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine has an article called The Science of Success which can be summarized:
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people.
I've always felt that it was wrong that ADHD, ADD and hyperactivity are often treated as diseases, disabilities, or defects.
I feel that these are misdisagnosed special skills. What's wrong with a person that is so skilled at multitasking that they can't not do it? What's wrong with a person that is so full of energy that they "just can't sit still". Maybe a child (like myself) is easily distracted in school because school is so damn boring.
In this TED.COM talk, Ken Robinson mentions a girl who couldn't sit still. The doctor didn't put her on pills, he said, "You need to become a dancer". She became one of the most successful dancer/choreographers of all time. We need more doctors like that.
When I was little home computers only ran one program at a time. As a hyperactive child years of using two Commodore 64 computers side-by-side didn't seem so unusual to me. I felt like someone had finally made a computer for me when the Commodore Amiga arrived. It had a mouse, windows, multitasked like no computer before it. I would be on a BBS in one window, writing code in another window, and formatting floppy disks in another. It was awesome.
Last September Dana Blankenhorn wrote in his blog post titled, "Now we know why Ritalin works":
...I believe therapy is still highly recommended. The real answer lies in self-awareness, using ADHD's gifts to concentrate and create, while being aware of its downsides and treating yourself more gently as a result.
We treat children with AHDH wrong. Teachers shouldn't take a "wait and see" attitude when the early warning signs appear. Instead, they should be trained to spot the early warning signs even earlier and then, instead of putting the child on a typical "lowered success criteria" Individualized Education Program, start assigning work that captures their attention. Assign more reading, not less. More homework, not less. Develop habits that take advantage of their special skills. Enhance their life by emphasizing their special abilities. Build their confidence by teaching them dangerous things. My first pocket knife was a seminal event in my life. I gained confidence because I had been trusted with something dangerous. I learned to be careful. I learned responsibility, not TV-simulated "after school special" tripe.
The concept of "lowered success criteria", while well-intentioned, is wrong. A child with ADHD will grow up to be someone that has to work twice as hard to be as successful as other people. Get them used to working twice as hard now. (This will also end any stereotypes of kids trying to get on IEPs because they are lazy. Right?)
I was hyperactive as a child. I couldn't sit still, and other kids picked on me. So I built worlds of my own, first with LEGO, then with computers. As an adult I do that with computers and networks and books. I was lucky to find such an outlet. We should help kids find such outlets.
Now science is showing that there is an evolutionary advantage and a genetic reason to having a certain percentage of society being a little bit different. The problem, it seems, is that society doesn't take advantage of their special skills.
In Time Management for System Administrators I wrote about multitasking and took a big risk by saying that some people are better at it, possibly people with ADHD are just differently skilled.
Now I feel vindicated.
P.S. Another surprising tidbit in "Now we know why Ritalin works" was the author pointing out that he doesn't, "react well to praise. Tell me you like this article and I may just shrug it off. Tell me you hate it and we can have a good argument -- well an argument at any rate. Praise doesn't give me the hit it gives you -- I need a lot of it to feel it.
Do I have a similar problem? Hmm... let me think. During my first performance review in my first job out of college my boss's #1 feedback was: "Learn to take a compliment better. When you get a simple compliment you spend more time refusing it and deferring it than anyone I know." (paraphrased).
Confused, I asked, "So what should I do instead?"
He replied, "How about just saying 'Thank you.'"
I remember being completely shocked by this. It took me years to develop this into a habit. To this day it is an conscious effort to remember to do this.
a list of dumb things to check
When you can't figure out what's wrong, maybe one of these will help.Time Management Wiki
http://wiki.everythingsysadmin.com is my wiki for my various books. The Time Management sub-wiki has a lot of useful tools and products.Using commercial tools to teach academic subjects
Mark Dennehy wrote and article called, "Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman" in response to Joel's article, "Capstone projects and time management".
(I'll give you all some time to read the articles... done yet?)
I want to agree and disagree with something Mark wrote (and a big "P.S." at the end about something he said about my time management book).
Mark wrote:
Undergraduate courses in CS and CEng are not there to teach industrial tools, but basic principles
I agree... but please don't go too far. The use of industrial tools, when used, should be as a demonstration of the principles being taught, not to gain some kind of certification that they know how to use the tool. Eliminating such tools would be going too far. We all know there are students that are "visual learners", "audio learners" and "kinesthetic" learners. Using the tools in a real environment is where the kinesthetic learners will benefit.
When I took my undergraduate class on software engineering methodology I felt it was useless because I couldn't see the point of most of what I was being taught. Most of my programming had been done solo or on a small team. I could not take seriously the problems that were being "fixed" by the software methodologies discussed in our lectures. "Code size estimation? Bah! Impossible, so why even try!" What would have solved this problem? To put me in an environment where we had a large enough team that things started to break down and we needed GIT, Bugzilla, and Tinderbox.
However, that was 1987-1991. Back then basic tools like source code control, bug tracking, and automated testing were uncommon. Today's students get more exposure to those things via exposure to Open Source projects than I got in my entire college career.
What about the students that aren't exposed to how open source projects work? They get no exposure. They don't get taught these principles. My guess is that these students are the majority of college students today. The superstars get exposure but not everyone is a superstar. In fact, by definition most students are not.
Obviously first-semester students should focus on getting comfortable with smaller issues like text editors, files, and getting their first programs to work at al. However, after someone gets some exposure, they should hand their homework in via passing a GIT or Subversion URL to the instructor. Peers should test each other's code and submit bug reports, and be graded by whether they include reproducible test cases or not. Unit-tests and system-tests, in a simple automated test framework ("Makefiles" are sufficient) should be part of the assignment.
Tom
P.S. And since you mentioned TM4SA...
At least when Limoncelli wrote Time Management for Systems Administrators he was putting forward a set of skills that had proven to work for him in the field, and he was trying to pass on lessons learnt the hard way.
I made a conscious decision to write what worked for me and people near me rather than write a book about the theory of time management and productivity. Before writing the book I did some research and found that people do not tolerate more than a certain amount of theory in self-help books. A little bit is motivational, too much is a turn-off. On the other hand, research finds that geeks tend to be motivated by knowing how the internals of something work. That's an argument for including more theory. I had to strike a balance.
I don't recommend Time Management for System Administrators (TM4SA) as a textbook. It is a self-help book. People will only benefit from a self-help book if they feel they have a problem. The 80% of your class that doesn't feel they have a problem would hate the professor for making them read it. Oddly enough I had terrible time management skills when I was in college. My low GPA is proof! If only I had TM4SA then! (Go figure out that time paradox!)
On the other hand, I do promote The Practice of System and Network Administration as a text book. It was written with colleges classes in mind (senior undergraduate and masters programs). As proof, each chapter ends with questions, something one generally finds in text books. The questions are designed to help the student review the material with a few "soul searching" questions mixed in here and there. The latter are potentially good term-paper ideas.
The Secret New York Minute
Some New York Trains are 1-minute late by design according to an article in today's New York Times.
It turns out that a 5:20 train leaves at 5:21. This gives people a good feeling when late because they "just caught" their train.
Since I take such a train every day, I'm not sure if I believe this. By my AT&T cell phone, the trains seem to leave right on time. My theory is that they leave 59 seconds late. It is still technically 5:20 (in the above example).
What really annoys me is that the train doors close "on time" (whatever that is) but then the train sits there on the track waiting for permission to move. Once I just missed a train and stood there pounding loudly on the glass door, yelling and screaming (and then yelling, screaming and cussing) as the train stood there for 5 minutes. The conductor heard me but wouldn't open the door to let me in.
Maybe it was the cussing.
How this relates to system administration: Under-promise and over-deliver. If you tell a user "this will take an hour" and then it takes 2 hours, they will hate you. If you tell them "this will take 3 hours" then fix it in 2 hours, they'll think you are a genius. Either way you spend 2 hours on the task. Therefore, always increase your estimates. TPOSANA has a few tips related to this kind of thing, especially where giving support to unsupported products is concerned.
Email makes me stressed (and how to cope)
This is a guest-blog entry by a coworker Tanya Reilly.
Something I realised this week:
Opening my (personal or work) email inbox makes me stressed. If the network is slow, and it takes a couple of seconds for my mail to be displayed, that's a couple of seconds where I feel under real pressure. Email, rather than being the source of joy one would assume, brings obligation: this mail needs reply, this question needs to be answered, this bank statement needs to be read, this lovely long catch-up email from a friend needs a thoughtful response. No matter how pleasant an email is, it usually means something new that needs to be done. Worst of all are the mails that are still in my inbox that I've already read. Was I supposed to do something about them? Does someone think I'm a jerk for not replying? Was there something I was supposed to do with my bank account? Have I forgotten to pay for something on eBay? All of this to think about inside a couple of seconds. It's so pointless.
Solutions:
1) Keep the inbox empty. I've watched that Inbox Zero talk that was going around a while back, and the dude has it right: never use the inbox as a todo list. Anything that needs to be done gets noted in the real todo list, and the mail gets archived. I mean, if it's a five minute response, do that straight away, and archive the mail, but if it's a reply that needs any thought, take it out of the inbox and make a note to reply later.
2) Add email-replying to my calendar. I already put "paperwork" in there, for paying bills and filling in forms, and replying to personal emails is just as important and equally worth scheduling.
3) Stop checking mail. Don't read mail on my phone. Don't reflexively check mail during context switches. Don't have email checking be the default first thing to do when I'm online. Email's addictive, and the reward rarely lives up to the anticipation. I will stay away from the email.
Well, it's largely untried so far, but I feel like I've identified something that's easy to change that will reduce my level of background stress. So far not reading email before going to work has made a difference in how much I enjoy mornings. If it works out, I'll report back.
I'm so tempted to do a Knuth and respond to email once a quarter. Wouldn't it be nice? An auto-responder saying "Tanya will read your email on October 3rd. If your message is urgent, please... well, don't phone either actually. Uh. Note it on twitter, maybe? You're smart: you'll think of something."
(If you only get a few emails a week and are happy every time, this must sound so mental.)
Interview: Time Management for System Administrators Training at LISA 2009
Usenix interviewed me about my Time Management tutorial at the upcoming LISA 2009 conference. It isn't too late to sign up for this class!
Why email is bad for time management
I usually don't just post links to other people's articles, but I found Email: The Variable Reinforcement Machine an excellent explanation of why email is a time management disaster.Syncing multiple Google Apps Calendars to an iPhone (it isn't obvious)
Google has made it possible to sync from Google Calendar to your iPhone's native app. The sync is bidirectional and over the air. Setting it up is a little confusing, but the docs walk you through it. To enable it you use the "Google Sync" web-based app. Go to m.google.com/sync, select iPhone, and follow the instructions.
You can sync multiple calendars to the native iPhone Calendar app, but doing searches for how exactly to do it mostly gives incorrect results. I don't know if Google changed the process and people haven't updated their docs, or if I'm just searching for the wrong thing.
So that I can find the right procedure, I'm including it here.
Before we begin, remember three things: (1) this is for "Google Apps" (i.e. "Google Apps for your Domain"), (2) this syncs to the iPhone native Calendar app, giving you off-line calendar access and no need to use the web browser, (3) you do most of these steps from the iPhone's web browser, not from your laptop. (Some other web sites have posts that confuse some of these issues.)
- Make sure syncing to the iPhone native Calendar app is set up and works already. If you need instructions on how to do this, go to m.google.com/sync, select iPhone, and follow the instructions. (You can do this from your iPhone or your computer. I recommend doing it from your computer so you can read the instructions while you do the steps on your iPhone).
- On your iPhone, open the Safari browser and go to http://m.google.com
- Click on Google Apps user? at the bottom of the screen.
- Enter your domain name (i.e. whatever.com).
- Click the Sync icon in your domain area (this section has a green background).
- Sign in if required.
- Select your device to configure Calendars.
- When you are done the calendar entries appear on your iPhone native calendar app. Each will be a different color (not the same colors as on the web, but at least you can tell them apart).
Updated: Corrected my statement about the color of the calendar entries.
My tutorials at LISA 2009
As I mentioned previously, I'll be presenting two tutorials at LISA 2009. Both are new.
The one on Time Management is a total re-write. That's why it is subtitled "a new approach". I've been teaching time management to system administrators for long enough that I've discovered that what people really need is a new way to think about their entire day. By thinking about their day ahead of schedule we can make adjustments to how we operate that day. The result is more satisfaction at the end of the day. People that have taken my class before should find it interesting and new; plus a good refresher on things they may have forgotten, or wasn't relevant until the more basic stuff had "sunk in".
The other class is totally new: Design Patterns for System Administrators . A design pattern is "a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem." That is, this class is going to be all the rules of thumb and tips that I find I get asked about, plus a lot of tips I wish people would ask me about! (Yes, there will be rants!)
I'm taking a break from working on my slides to post this. I should get back to work!
New Moleskine daily planners shipping
As I said in TM4SA, the ideal time management system keeps many months in the future with you at all time, fits in your pocket, and can be with you 24/7. Moleskine makes a book small enough to fit in your pocket but has a "page per day" and lined paper.The date is pre-printed at the top of each page.I was going to write about it last year when someone showed me theirs but the web site was sold out for 2009. Luckily the 2010 model is now available.
The secret is that the paper is very thin, but not so thin to be fragile.
See their 2010 daily planners on their web site: http://www.moleskineus.com/moleskine-2010-planners-daily.html
For other tips on PDAs, PAAs, and software, I've recently updated the TM4SA wiki: http://wiki.everythingsysadmin.com
(This is an unpaid endorsement, by the way.)
Three useful TimeAndDate.com URLs
As a sysadmin at an international company I find myself doing more and more timezone conversions, and with a high frequency of errors. Thus, I rely on this site to make my life easier. Not only do they provide a great free service, but their web pages are bookmark-able in ways that let me use and re-use their stuff.
The site has many useful date and timezone calculations. If you want to know the time in New York City, Cambodia, or any other place you have (or haven't) hard of, they can do the calculation. You can even create URLs that display the current (or a particular) time for your favorite locations. They have calculators that do frequent but error-prone lookups that go beyond simple timezone calculations. How many days between today and Sunday, June 6, 2010? When is Easter Sunday in the US next year? When did I turn 1 million seconds old? Countdown clocks, eclipes, and so on are also available. It seems like they add new features every month.
Suppose you have offices in New York, London, and Shenzhen. You can create a URL that shows the current time at those offices. Bookmark it. Now if you need to make a phone call, check the bookmark before you dial. Simple.
Bookmarking these three URLs will save countless hours and prevent tons of embarrassing mistakes. (In these examples we'll pretend you have offices in San Francisco, New York, Dublin, Hyderabad, Beijing, Melbourne.)
- Personal World Clock: This URL shows the current time at all six locations. Since it always shows the current time, this is useful for deciding whether or not it is apropriate to call someone in another office. I'm sure you can think of many other uses for this page. The URL encodes the list of locations. You can list dozens and dozens of locations so don't be afraid to list ever darn office in your company. Put the link on a highly visible place (like your internal intranet web site) so others can benefit. Here's a tip: Sort the countries west to east so the display is more logically ordered.
- Meeting Planner: Suppose you need to set up a meeting. Click on this URL. The colors indicate when people might be sleeping or awake (Mnemonic: "red is bad") (again, the locations are sorted west to east). People in New York, Dublin and Hyderabad need a meeting? Move your mouse down to highly potential meeting times and look for where all the locations involved are "green." The optimal time for someone may be "tomorrow" for someone else, thus day of the week is included. Unsure when Daylight Saving Time kicks in for Dublin versus the US? Never fear. TimeAndDate.com knows. Adjust the URL to the exact date and your timezone worries are over. This planner accepts only 6 locations therefore you might want to provide links on your internal web site that are appropriate for each division.
- Friday, July 31, 2009 at 9:00:00 AM (NEW YORK TIME): Are your fingers getting tired listing the time and date for a meeting followed by conversions for all the timezones involved? Not only am I tired of this, but I tend to accidentally introduce typos or miscalculations when I try. Now I list only one time but create a link to a URL like this one that does the conversion for me. The link is easy to generate: it's taken from the meeting planner page. Some companies have a policy of only listing date/times in the timezone of their HQ. Linking to this URL makes it easier for everyone. (If a meeting has participants from 1 or 2 timezones I list both times right in the email. However, linking to a URL like this is even better).
For all of these I use the same list of locations consistently. It is the locations of the people I most frequently deal with. That way they get used to seeing the same set of countries. It encourages people to use the same list every time too.
Lastly, using a gobal calendaring system like Oracle Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps and so on also reduces the need for people to manually convert timezones. However, even with these tools, we often want to list times and dates in emails or on web pages. TimeAndDate.com is extremely useful in these cases. Using it makes us more efficient because it saves us time and prevent errors. When we place URLs like the ones above on our intranet homepage or use them in emails the use tends to spread virally (in the good sense of the word) and we create an multiplier effect improving efficiency throughout our organization.
Which smartphone should I buy?
People often ask for my opinion about which smart phone is the best. I don't know what is best for you, but I can give you this advice.No smart phone is perfect. The designers have to make compromises or the device would cost too much and it wouldn't sell. Successful products that do many things really do one thing extremely well, a few things ok, and the rest just barely enough so the company doesn't get sued. The 7-in-one printer I have at home is really just a good printer. The scanner is pretty good but a real scanner would turn pages for me. The fax capability is minimal. I can't remember what the other 4 functions are. In fact, I could swear that this kind of device used to be called a 5-in-one printer but then someone started claiming that the power button is two features (can you name both?).
Generally a smart phone has some combination of these features: phone, music player, web browsing, time management (PDA) features, and some would say that the ability to run apps counts as another feature. Some phones do one or two of those well and fake it through the rest.
If X represents the set of features that were the focus and Y is the set of features that were not the focus, you can easily summarize a product's focus by saying, "it's an X that happens to do Y". For example, "it's a PDA that happens to make phone calls and surf the web." If you want to imply more disdain, add "in a pinch" to the end.
Think long and hard about what you want the most. To me the most important features are the PDA tools: todo list and calendar. To someone else it might be the ability to surf the web.
Here's my opinion of the utility of the most popular smart phones:
- Palm Treo: A PDA that happens to make phone calls and will surf the web in a pinch. (Actually, the web browser is excellent in a few respects: You can cache pages [important to me since I ride subways a lot] and it strips the pages down to text so they load fast. Really fast. www.nytimes.com doesn't look like the front page of the newspaper, but I get all my articles just fine.)
- iPhone: An iPod music player and web browser that runs apps that happens to make phone calls and is a PDA in a pinch. Actually it isn't a PDA at all, but the web browser lets you access on-line time management tools. This is good if you always have connectivity, which is not true for me; thus this violates one of my fundamental principles of time management: tools must always be available and fast to access.
- Android/T-Mobile G1: A phone that surfs the web that happens to play music. The music player is weak especially lacking in areas important to podcast listeners. The apps are getting much better over time.
- Palm Pre: I haven't used one but it seems to be focused on web browsing and PDA features. I'd love to get my hands on one. Sadly all I've done so far is watch someone unbox one for the first time.
So what do I use?
Interestingly enough, I'm an example of the serendipity that only accidents can bring. I was very happy with my Palm Treo. I wanted a PDA that happened to have other phone and web features and it was perfect (especially after enhancing the PDA functions with DateBk 6 from Pimlico Software). Then my Treo phone was damaged beyond repair and I had an opportunity to get an iPhone. How bad could the PDA features be? Oh, they are non-existant? Ugh. I started muddling through using web-based todo systems like Google Tasks. What I discovered, however, was that the one feature I didn't plan on using became my favorite feature: the music/video player! I have a large music collection but I never have time to listen to it. There are many podcasts I'd like to listen to but I never have time to hear them. I didn't expect to use the iPod features of my iPhone but now I listen to about 20 hours of podcasts and music each week. I'm listening to music that I've owned for more than a decade that I've hadn't heard in years. I'm getting a huge education through TED.com videos and keeping up with the world through NPR and IT Conversations Network podcasts.
So much for following my own advice!
Now on Kindle: Time Management for System Administrators
I'm happy to announce that Time Management for System Administrators (O'Reilly) is now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1, 2 and iPhone), and is being sold without any DRM.It's a good time to read TM4SA: With the economic slow-down, most IT shops are being asked to "do more with less". TM4SA is really a book about personal efficiency. It is a self-help book for the overburdened geek.
Kindle makes it easy: No cables to wrangle. No special lighting needed. Read it on the train, in the park, or at the office. Best of all, read it at your leisure. TM4SA is the kind of book that you can read a bite at a time. Short chapters make it perfect for reading "when you have a few minutes" while waiting for a system update to download and install.
Read the full announcement from O'Reilly.
[ Note: Both Time Management for System Administrators and The Practice of System and Network Administration (2nd Ed) are available as E-Book and can be read on-line on www.safaribooksonline.com or mobile-optimized m.safaribooksonline.com. ]
How did I have such a productive week?
I was more productive at work this last week than any other week this last few months (maybe longer than that). How did I do it?I didn't read Twitter. At all.
On Monday I was having a strange network problem made it impossible for me to access Twitter from my laptop. After three days I had, without realizing it, broken the Twitter habit. (Thank God I never activated the post-by-SMS feature.)
This is ironic since Twitter is having an awesome week of PR. They've been mentioned every day in The New York Times, coverage of Obama's Joint Session on Tuesday has been mentioning Twitter, Google's PR department started a twitter feed, Newt Gingrich has been posting tweets that sound like a 12-year old heckling a movie he doesn't undestand, and that's just half the PR they're getting. They're getting so much press, you'd think they're doing the kind of full-court press a company does when they want to be bought (you don't think those stories just happen, do you? No, someone from a PR company pitched every single one of them, I assure you). And yet, this was the week that I stopped reading twitter.
Why is Twitter bad for your time management? If you are like me there are too many interruptions and distractions that prevent work from getting done. There's always an excuse not to work on a project when there's email to read, co-workers to catch up with, and so on. Twitter had become another procrastination device. Do something productive? Nah, I'll check my twitter instead then spend the next hour surfing the various URLs people are mentioning. Pay attention at a meeting? Nah, check twitter via my iPhone! Now I've missed half of what people have said, and I'll spend the afternoon researching what I should have heard people say at the meeting. Twitter is an anti-productivity device.
"But Tom," you say, "anyone with a tiny bit of self-control could save their twittering reading for after work. It's like, you know, dessert after a fine meal." Well, that may be true, but anyone familiar with my time management philosophy understands that I don't focus so much on time management because I'm good at it: I have to focus on time management because I'm so bad at it. I have little self-control. I'm easily distracted. If you don't have those problems then Twitter is just fine for you. That ain't me.
I have bad habits. I know it. My time management "techniques" are often ways to "trick" me into better habits. Weeks that I trick myself properly I am productive. Weeks that I don't... not so much. The goal of my time management writing has been to record these tricks (and ones I've heard from others) in hopes that other people find them useful too.
So my "trick" of the week? If Twitter has become a distraction, delete it. You won't miss it. Sorry to be the naysayer on the cool new technology that all the cool kids use, but I had a productive week thanks, in part, to a lack of Twitter.
Interview with Tom Limoncelli in ComputerWorld
I'll be the the keynote at Linux.Conf.Au in 2 weeks so ComputerWorld rang me up for an interview. They asked me about what I'd be speaking about, the challenges of system administration, and my political activism.Interview with Tom Limoncelli in ComputerWorld: The sysadmin's mantra: Manage time, think 'abundance' and softly does it. Author and system administrator guru Tom Limoncelli offers his insights into a range of sysadmin topics ahead of his keynote speech this month at linux.conf.au.Just between me and the readers of this blog, during the interview I had a disquieting realization that the interviewer came from a perspective that open source wasn't the obvious default for everything. Oh yeah, we open source users are still, ya know, cutting edge! What a reality check that was! (Think about that the next time you apt-get!)
Gmail adds "Tasks" feature
Hey time management fans! Google has announced a very simple task manager to gmail as part of their "labs" offering.To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you're signed in). Select "Enable" next to "Tasks" and then click "Save Changes" at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the "Contacts" link, you'll see a "Tasks" link. Just click it to get started.If you've read Time Management for System Administrators you may be wondering, "Can I use The Cycle with Google Tasks?" The answer is: sort of. You can have one todo list per day, because the system lets you create multiple lists. However, events don't float to the next day if they aren't completed "today", and in fact, moving items to the next list is rather time consuming. Instead, it is very easy to move items up and down the list. Thus, if you insert date markers, you can move things to "tomorrow" very easily. However, be careful not to accidentally create "the never-ending list of doom". Here's a screenshot of what using The Cycle might look like:
What's my favorite feature? The fact that there is now a menu item under "More Actions" that lets you turn an email into a task. The subject line is used for the task, and a link to the original message is included. I think this makes it very powerful.
In summary: The fact that the tasks aren't a function of the calendar like most systems is interesting, and will require some adjustment. The ability to easily link tasks to email threads has some interesting possibilities.
Tom interviewed on CuddleTech blog
Ben Rockwood interviewed Tom for his blog's podcast. We talk about time management, the history and future of system administration, and a lot more. Links to the podcast are on his blog www.CuddleTech.com/blogTime Management for Anarchists
Jim Munroe teaches Time Management in grassroots activism. He's turned his talk into an 8-minute Flash animation. The points he makes are excellent. Check it out.First Day of the Month Routine (and a tip about Mailman)
Today is the first day of October. If you are using The Cycle system from Time Management for System Administrators don't forget to review your life- and long-term goals and do any other monthly routines.
Being the first of the month, sites running mailing list software like Mailman will be sending you reminder notices about which mailing lists you are subscribed. Take this time to pick a few lists to remove yourself from. What high-volume list have you been filtering off to a folder and ignoring? What low-volume list did you join ages ago and aren't getting any value from? What technology mailing list are you on for sentimental reasons even though you no longer use that technology? Today is a good day to unsubscribe from these mailing lists.
Both The Practice of System and Network Administration and Time Management for System Administrators can be read on-line by subscribers of O'Reilly's Safari Books Online service.
Ready for LISA 2008 in San Diego!
I've registered, I've booked my hotel. Are you going to LISA 2008?
On Thursday I will be doing a 90-minute open Q&A session about Time Management. Feel free to stop by and ask me anything.
On Friday I will be presenting my newest talk titled, "System Administration and The Economics of Plenty". When we start to see how plentiful the world is, we think about our roles as system administrators differently. It affects everything from how we set policy to how we do our jobs.
Register online today!
I hope to see you there!
Tom @ Ohio LinuxFest 2008, Columbus, Ohio, October 10-11, 2008
Tom will be teaching two half-day tutorials: "Time Management for System Administrators" and "Interviewing and Hiring System Administrators". This is a rare opportunity to see these talks presented in the Ohio area. Register soon!With the economy in a down-turn, Time Management is key to being efficient at what you do. With people's hiring budgets being slashed, it is important that the people you do hire are top notch. Both of these tutorials are intended for both the new and experienced system administrator or IT manager.
The sixth annual Ohio LinuxFest will be held on October 10-11, 2008 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hosting authoritative speakers and a large expo, the Ohio LinuxFest welcomes Free and Open Source Software professionals, enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to take part in the event. The Ohio LinuxFest is a free, grassroots conference for the Linux/Open Source Software/Free Software community
GTD+The Cycle
Andrew Hyatt's blog mentions his merger of TM4SA's "The Cycle" with the GTD methodology.
I solved this problem by using the agenda, and scheduling my next actions that I wanted to work on for the current day. I would then see a list of the next actions I had to accomplish that day. If I didn't get them done that day, the next day I'd move them up a day, to the current day. It ended up being a daily-planner-like system a lot like Tom Limoncelli recommends in Time Management for System Administrators. But with next actions..Sounds great, Andrew!
I like GTD but don't think it is optimal for busy system administrators or software engineers. His addition to The Cycle is a great variation on the theme. That's how I hoped The Cycle would be used: a good system that people could adopt then customize for their own use.
Time Management Tip: Starting New Big Tasks
A time management problem that people often ask me about is how to get started on a new big tasks (NBT). With a heavy number of interruptions, meetings, and so on it can be easy to get distracted and never actually start that important NBT. Starting a NBT is also a bit intimidating; it's emotionally easier to continue with checking email, answering tickets, and (this is the big one) work on less important, but easier, tasks.
When I need to start a new big task I hide. I really do. I find a small conference room, hide, and work for an hour disconnected from the internet. I'm not ashamed to admit this. Hiding really works.
I'm not completely hidden. I don't cover the windows. People can find me. My immediate coworkers know where I am.
Tom interviewed about Time Management on ITBusiness.ca
Tom spoke at the IT360 conference in Toronto earlier this week. While there, ITBusiness.ca interviewed him about time management techniques for system administrators. Read the interview with Tom Limoncelli here.Fix Something Annoying
In Time Management for System Administrators, I write about setting up periodic processes: Things you want to do once a day, week, or year. My friend Joe recently pointed out something he does periodically:
Every week, find something that annoys you. Not "needs to be done" but annoys you. Honest to god, every time you do this you make your life better. And after a few times doing it, you feel stronger about it... and you start doing a better job of identifying the things you want in your life, and the things you don't.That's excellent advice.
That's how I recently came to fix my home WiFi network. My network has a few components that didn't seem to be working right. At first I could work around the problems with an occasional reboot. However, the reboots were getting more frequent and eventually I was rebooting the router daily without even realizing how annoying it had gotten. I even had an Ethernet cable run across the floor (how ugly!) to one machine that I used frequently. My SO was rebooting the router too, which meant I was no longer able to track how frequently the reboots were needed.
There were other problems related to the fact that the DHCP server lost the list of DHCP allocations at each reboot and some of my home appliances didn't like being assigned a different address now and then. Sometimes this resulted in IP address conflicts any time the router rebooted.
Finally I canceled plans for one evening and replaced the router with a Linksys WRT-54GL. The "GL" model is hackable... you can replace the firmware with a Linux-based systems. There are many to choose from. I used the Tomato replacement firmware from PolarCloud (cost: free!) and it worked on the first try. (If you want something that provides a captive portal, I recommend CoovaAP). The web-based UI is excellent, with AJAX'y little features like being able to click on the IP address of a device instantly brings you to the page for giving that device a static DHCP assignment. Within a few days I had static assignments for both of my Tivos, both iPhones in the house, our WiFi-based HP printer, and, oh yes, and our computers too. I enabled some QoS settings and was delighted to find that the defaults are exactly what I needed (what? open source software with defaults that make sense? amazing!).
Today I realized I hadn't mucked with any WiFi system in a week... exactly my desire. One less annoying thing in my life. Thanks for the reminder, Joe!
Setting aside time for big fun
One of the biggest time management challenges in my life is making sure that I have enough fun. Fun is different from not working. I spend plenty of time not working and yet when I look back on the last few months I wish I had spent more time having the kind of fun that involves going out; the kind of fun that when I get back to work I want to tell people about. Without at least a little planning, non-work time may be squandered on TV, chatting online, and reading blogs.
I don't mean that one needs to plan the fun. Nothing could be less fun than a plan like...
8:00 party starts
8:05 lift beer to mouth, drink
8:10 laugh at joke someone tells
8:11 think of funny retort, say it out loud
That would be dreadful.
However big fun stuff requires planning. Concert tickets need to be bought in advance, anything involving seeing friends requires scheduling it with them in advance, etc. I consider it "fun" to speak at Linux/FOSS/etc. User Groups, but that takes months of advance planning to get on their schedules, book travel, and so on. If I don't invest some time in planning those things, they don't happen.
Therefore this weekend my SO and I spent some time talking about things we wanted to do, marked up our calendar to show when we had off from work (a lot of holidays coming up), marked various conferences we're attending, RSVPed to various parties we'd been invited to, and used our calendar to pick dates to see various shows. Of note, we're going to see Emo Philips perform in NYC on Jan 18, we bought broadway show tickets to see The Farnsworth Invention (written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin) on Feb 21, and we're planning on attending a mid-winter SF on called Wicked Faire. The Emo Philips show is general admission... if you happen to be in the area and want to join the group of us attending, please let me know.
However, there are ways to reduce the planning required. One way is to set up a regularly scheduled night. For example, I know some couples that always keep Wednesday night open for "date nights". Families often set aside one night a week for "family game night".
Weekends don't need too much planning: For just about any place in the world there is a web site that lists events in your area this weekend and rarely do they require much planning except having something to wear. If you live in NYC there are sites like Nonsense NYC, Gemini and Scorpio, and FlavorPill. Flavorpill has listings for many cities. My little town of Montclair, New Jersey has BaristaNet which lists many events.
I do like to do spur-of-the-moment outings to see movies, get dinner, etc. but it is difficult to find which friends happen to be in the same situation at the very same moment. Phoning them can be embarrassing... "Hi! Are you free to see a movie in an hour?" is kind of rude, and guilt-inducing if people have to say "no" all the time. I'd rather have a system that would notify my local friends by TXT message. They could ignore it if they are busy, or call me if they want to come. "Local" could be defined as everyone I know on Orkut or FaceBook, that happens to be physically near me (either defined by their address, twitter status, or the GPS on their phone). That would be awesome. Someone should invent that.
What's your most effective way to make sure there's enough fun in your life?
Zeitmanagement and ZarzÄ…dzanie and 時間管ç†術
Yet more translations of Time Management for System Administrators have been announced! It's now available in German, Polish and Japanese, in addition to previously available French translation.
(Sadly MovableType doesn't like those Japanese unicode text. I'll try to fix that later. Or can someone post a suggestion?)Need to jott someting down?
A principle in Time Management For System Administrators is that we shouldn't trust our brain to remember things. It's better to write something down, or record it somehow, rather than trust our brain. Besides, it leaves more brain space for important things.
I often recommend that if you don't have a way to write something down, call and leave yourself voicemail. There is a company called Jott.com that does this even better. You call them, say what you want, and the text of what you said is emailed to you, along with a link to the audio file. They use caller-id to determine who you are. The voice-recognition is pretty good so far. (I've used it twice). They keep an archive of what you've recorded. The UI when you dial in is very good (I like the fact that it is safe to hang up after you hear they've received your message.)
You can also "jott" to other users.
It's now an open beta. Sign up here.
Three Impossible Things
When I teach my Time Management class at conferences (such as at Sysadmin Magazine's conference in Maryland, May 7-8, 2007) there are three points in the class where I say things that make people say, "That can't be possible!" and then realize that it is possible because of a simple technique or skill that I've just taught. Each time this happens I feel like I've told people that I've invented faster-than-light travel and then demonstrated it.
Those three things are
- Prioritize your work
- Schedule work
- Control the hours you work
"What?" you say, "That's impossible! Every system administrator knows that none of that is possible because people are always interrupting us and even if they didn't things are so different every day there's no way to plan things.
The first thing the class discusses is better ways to handle interrupts. By "handle" I mean control. Right now interrupts control you. With a few simple techniques you can control them. The next topic is managing your todo list. Once you start writing down the your tasks and requests you gain a new level of control. One technique lets you schedule work for certain days. Another technique helps you set priorities. Another let's you regain control over your ability to leave the office on-time.
Impossible? No, just a matter of gaining back control. Which is what we all really wanted in the first place.
Time Management and ADD/ADHD
Someone recently asked me if TM4SA is good for people with ADD/ADHD or "just normal people"?
First, I should say I'm no expert at ADD/ADHD but I was diagnosed as "hyper-active" in the mid-70s, which was before we had terms like ADD/ADHD (or if we did, they weren't commonly used term). I think that I developed some of my techniques out of trying to survive being hyper-active.
I know that some people with ADD/ADHD find it comforting to be able to "fall into" a structured system like "The Cycle" (the name of the technique discussed in the book). Certainly when I'm feeling frustrated and flustered, I find that if I "turn on" The Cycle, it makes it easier for me to "turn off" distractions and get focused.
I do mention ADD/ADHD at one point in the book when discussing multi-tasking. Too little multitasking is inefficient, and too much is confusing. That's true with anyone. I've had friends with ADD/ADHD tell me that they feel more comfortable multitasking (I think their words were, "I can't work unless I'm multi-tasking."). My suggestion here is that the "right balance" is different when you are younger than when you are older: consider re-evaluating where the pendulum has swung every few years. Everyone is different, and we change over time. Working where you are optimal is important. Personally, I a different every day depending on how much sleep I got the night before!
I'll throw the question back to the readers of this blog: If you are ADD/ADHD, did you find TM4SA useful? I'd love to hear from people.
Apple iPhone leaked! Accidentally shipped to customer via FedEx! Pictures!
No, silly. No such thing happened. In fact, I'm betting there won't be an iPhone announced next week.
Apple knows to only make one major announcement per conference. Last year it was the Intel thing. This time it will be iTV, or whatever they're going to call it. He's already announced that he'll be announcing it. Why muddy the message by announcing two things?
This is a lot like the constant theme I make in Time Management for System Administrators from O'Reilly. (Note: to the new readers: this book is useful for anyone in IT, software development, and even non-geeks if you skip certain chapters). The theme of "focus".
"Focus" is concentrated effort. Focus means not trying to do too many things at once. It means using 100% of your brain on the current task so you can get it done efficiently. Nearly every chapter mentions focus in some way. For example, why are interruptions from users and co-workers so bad? Because it disrupts our focus. Interruptions are the national enemy of focus. In fact, the first chapter is all about interruptions: Ways to get fewer of them, how to be better at handling the ones that you do get, how to multi-task more efficiently, and how to sucker your co-workers into taking your interrupts. (Um... I mean, "how to share the joy with your co-workers").
Thanks for reading this blog post. My apologies to anyone that thought they'd be reading about a new product from Apple. I'm a big Mac fan... since they adopted a Unix base for their OS I have owned 2, work has paid for 4 just for me. However, remember to keep your focus: Reading rumor web-sites should be a task on your todo list under the "fun" or "entertainment" category. Otherwise it is basically a waste of time. It's not an efficient use of "work time". Watch the streaming broadcast of the presentation or read the summary afterwords. That's better time management for sure.
And if you have a typepad id, you can post a comment telling me how wrong I was for writing this. :-)
Tom at EverythingSysadmin.com
Time management diets?
A diet for TV watching? For email lists? For meetings?
One of the most common "New Years Resolutions" is to go on a diet. If you aren't sure, pay attention to the TV commercials last night... most were for products related to losing weight, getting into shape and giving up smoking. (The rest are champagne commercials which, I guess, are optimistic that you will remember their brand 11.5 months from now when you are preparing for next year's party.)
From a time management perspective, there are three diets I recommend: A TV diet, and a mailing list diet, and a meeting diet.
The TV diet is easy. Pledge that from now on, any time you add a TV show to the list that your Tivo/PVR records, you will remove at least one other TV show. As the amount of television in your life gets reduced, use this newly freed time for those projects you wish you had time for, like spending time with your loved ones or reading that book on Linux internals, or whatever you'd rather be doing. I wish Tivo had a feature where if you deleted a 1-hour show from your "Season Pass" list, it would ask you what you are going to do with that time instead. You would type in, "Play outside with my nephew". After that, you'd get a 60-minute block of time each week when your TV displays nothing but "Play outside with your nephew!" That would be awesome.
The mailing list diet is a similar strategy. Every time you join a new email list, pledge to remove yourself from one or two lists that you've found to be less useful. While finding better/faster ways to manage the email you receive is a good thing, it's even better to just plain receive less email. Today is January 1st, and like the first of every month I got a notice from every Mailman-maintained list reminding me that I'm subscribed. I have email filters that process messages from most of these lists and help me read those messages more efficiently. However today I looked at some of the "monthly reminders" with a careful eye and realized that I could really do without a few of those lists. They all had filters that sent the messages to a "read someday if you have free time" folder. Yeah, like that's gonna ever happen. I've now unsubscribed from those lists.
One of those lists, by the way, was a particularly high-volume mailing list that I was staying on "just in case I ever need to speak up and ask a question." I hadn't actually read a message from that list in ages.
I unsubscribed and made a note of how to re-subscribe if I ever needed. My hard disk thanks me.
I seem to add myself to new email lists all the time, sometimes casually. Having a monthly ritual of removing myself from 1-2 is a big win. I'm glad that Mailman sends those reminders.
The meeting diet can help you have more time to work while at work. Pick the least useful meeting that you attend each week and figure out how to eliminate it. Maybe it is optional, and you start only attending when you are particularly needed, or if the agenda lists something you need to know. If it doesn't have a pre-announced agenda, politely inform the meeting owner that Tom Limoncelli says that you should refuse to attend meetings without pre-announced agendas; that if he respected the need for attendees to manage their time well he would invest a few minutes in preparing an agenda and emailing it out before the meeting. (find a polite way to say that... if you get fired I can't help ya). If many people from your group are attending someone else's meeting, pick a delegate to attend and take notes for the others (and get someone else to be the delegate! Take turns otherwise). If the least useful meeting that you want to eliminate is the one meeting you are required to attend (i.e. your weekly staff meeting) then make a new years resolution to sit down with that person and figure out how to make it more useful. My favorite technique? Start exactly on time (that often saves 10 minutes), end on time (that encourages people to be brief), pre-announce the agenda (so speakers know there are other people that still have to speak), cut the meeting time in half and tell people they have to really be brief, and finally... require all able-bodied attendees to stand for the entire length of the meeting. It's amazing how efficient the meetings will become when everyone is standing. Another benefit is that you can have those meetings in a hallway... no need to fight with other groups about who gets to use the conference room when. Another benefit? People are more focused because they can't use their laptops to IM while standing.
What other diets can you go on that will help your time management? I'd love to hear from you!
Tom + Strata @ LISA '06 in Wash D.C., Dec 3-8, 2006
Tom and Strata be teaching and speaking at LISA 2006 in Washington D.C., Dec 3-9, 2006. This is one of our favorite conferences of the year because it is so dam useful. Get your boss to send ya. This year it is in Washington D.C., which makes it easy to get to for all the east-coasters that usually don't get around.
Tom will be speaking/teaching:
| Mon | 9am-5pm | Workshop | Managing Sysadmins (co-facilitator) |
| Wed | 2pm-3:30 | Invited Talk | Site Reliability at Google/My First Year at Google |
| Thu | AM | Tutorial | Time Management: Getting It All Done and Not Going (More) Crazy! |
| Thu | 12:30pm-1:30pm | Exhibition | "Meet the Authors" at Reiter's Conference Bookstore |
| Thu | 2pm-3:30 | Guru Talk | How to Get Your Paper Accepted at LISA |
| Thu | 4pm-5:40 | Guru Talk | Time Management for System Administrators |
| Fri | 11am-12:30 | Hit The Ground Running | Mac OS X |
Strata Rose Chalup will be speaking/teaching:
| Mon | PM | Tutorial | Project Troubleshooting |
| Wed | PM | Tutorial | Problem-Solving for IT Professionals |
| Thu | AM | Tutorial | Practical Project Management for Sysadmins and IT Professionals |
| Wed | 9pm-10pm | BOF | Sysadmin Education |
In addition, we will be hanging out in what is known as "the hallway track". In fact, if you haven't attended LISA before, you should know that a lot of the educational value is the people you meet. Tom says, "Early in my career a lot of what I learned was from the conversations in the hallway."
- More info about LISA 2006, Washington D.C., Dec 3-8, 2006
- Register for LISA 2006
Coming soon: Book signing and other events.
Ask Tom: My co-worker has bad time-management skills
Dear Tom,
How can I get my co-workers to read your book? We bought her a copy but she hasn't read it. She's so disorganized! She's not uninterested, just doesn't even have the skill to organize her time well enough to read it. She breaks down in tears when we bring up the subject of her not getting enough done. Both the project manager and myself have talked with her. At this point it is causing morale problems for other co-workers because her workload is half of everyone else and she doesn't get tasks done. What do we do?
Sincerely,
Stressed Sara
[ Read my answer behind the link... ]
Dear Stressed,
Sadly, there's no way to force someone to read a self-help book. Imagine if I handed you a book on weight loss and said I thought it would really help. I wouldn't hand you self-help book like that because your reaction would be so negative the book would end up in the garbage. If she's already under pressure to perform better, then anything direct will feel like an insult. Instead, it is more effective to let her pick.
I have to say that I made the same mistake myself in a big way the first time I was in a supervisory position. When I joined Bell Labs I was really excited about two classes that I had recently taken: "Communication Skills" and "Time Management". As team leader, I told everyone that I wanted them all to sign up for these two classes. In my enthusiasm I put a chart on my whiteboard track who had taken which class. I couldn't understand why nobody was signing up! Then someone told me that she didn't understand why everyone was being punished. Punished? Oops. Obviously I hadn't stressed enough that I had taken these classes myself and found them useful; that I just wanted everyone to have the same terminology, and that I thought everyone would be helped by the classes too. I also realized that by putting this chart on my whiteboard it was embarrassing everyone and their reaction was to "fight back" by resisting.
Instead I should have just handed out copies of the course catalog and let people know that the budget includes no more than 5 days of training. If one person signed up for my two preferred classes by chance, it would have been more than the number of people that signed up when I tried to force them (zero). If they liked it, they would have spread the word and others might have signed up too. In today's world we would have called it "viral marketing" but back then it would have just been co-workers spreading the word that you can get out of work for a week if you sign up for classes.
A self-help book will only be read by someone that feels they have a problem, and they have to pick (or think they picked) the solution.
You say "she's not uninterested." Did you ask her if she was interested in improving her time management skills, or did you ask her "What areas would you like to improve?" See the difference?
At the retirement party for a successful Bell Labs director he revealed his secret to management: If you want people to work hard on something, let them think they invented it. He told stories of how he would be so sure that a particular technique would solve a problem his team was working on. However he knew that if he hinted around it rather than saying it flat out, people would "think it up" themselves and then be motivated to work on it. In his career he was the manager of many people when they made some big breakthroughs. It really worked!
I also noticed that you said both you and your project manager are mentoring her. It can be quite stressful to have two managers saying conflicting things even if the deviations are slight (when one is emotional everything is magnified). If she is indecisive, maybe two people talking to her is too many. It might be better to have one person be her mentor.
Ask her, "What areas she would like to improve in?" rather than "What do you want to do to improve your time management?" The former puts an emphasis on what she wants to do. She probably won't say the exact answer you are hoping for, but suppose she says she has a hard time being interrupted and wants to learn to context switch better. You can ask, "Where might you find help for that?" If she doesn't think of Time Management for System Administrators, maybe you can ask her to check the table of contents to see if there is one chapter that might have answers in that area. Because she does the research, she'll feel like she "invented" the solution.
Handling interrupts is 80% of time management. I'm sure she'll find that chapter.
My friend Cicely has taught me to never say, "You should do such-and-such" but simply to say, "Doing such-and-such worked for me." If the people are interested, they'll try it too.
It's difficult to make choices when one is stressed. If she is feeling stressed it can be useful to gently help her make decisions by providing focus. When I had difficulty narrowing down a list of choices, a manager I once had would ask me, "If you had to eliminate one choice, which would it be?" That would shift my focus and soon I was eliminating many items down to one selection.
Ask her to read ONLY one chapter. Discourage her from reading any more than that, but give her space to actually read that one chapter. That may help her focus.
You might allocate time for her to read, offer to let her lock her door or go to the library. I find that "sooner is better than later" in these situations. If she's picked a chapter, send her off to read it right then. Offer to guard her door so that she isn't interrupted.
The chapters are short. I bet once she reads one chapter she'll read a few more.
Or she might ask to just read a bunch of articles she finds via Google.com. That might work too.
Let me know how it works out!
Tom
Tie your shoes faster
Tie your shoes faster, so you have more time to sysadmin:Rocketboom's interview with Sherng-Lee HuangWhile that is a silly example, there are a lot of quick tips that can really speed your workflow. For example, the majority of time spent emptying a trash can is often getting the new trash can liner. If you store your trash can liners near the garbage can, or set up a small cache, the total time is reduced. In fact, why not put 5-6 liners at the bottom of the can (under the liner currently being used). (My favorite "bash" prompt is export PS1="\h:\w \u\$ " At a previous company I had to change backup tapes every morning. The full tapes had to be manually labeled and I was always searching for a pen. My boss had the brilliant idea to get 6 pen holders (also known as "coffee mugs"), fill each with a dozen pens, and place them at strategic places around the computer room. Now we spent less time looking for a pen, more time doing our work. While he was at it, he put a pad of paper in each of those 6 places so that we always had something to write on. What about keeping three Xterm (shell) windows on your three most important servers so you don't have to keep SSHing into them? Why not have those three windows already logged in as "root" so you are ready to do whatever administrative task comes up? What about setting the prompt of your shell to indicate the hostname and user so that you don't type commands on the wrong host, or forget when you are "root". What about using a 2-port KVM switch (now less than $30) rather than constantly plugging and unplugging cables? (Saves wear-and-tear on the cables and your fingers too) Rather than lugging that power adaptor for your laptop all the time, why not have one permanently at your desk at work, one at home, and one in your car? On a whiteboard near your desk (or a big sheet of paper) write a quick diagram of your network, or a table of which IP subnets are where, or a table showing listing which server is currently qa, beta, and production (since they keep switching every time a new release comes out). While these tips save minutes rather than days, they reduce the amount of frustration in our workflows. Sometimes reducing frustration is like a big gift, or lifting a weight off our shoulders. How much better are we at the rest of our job if the little annoyances have been removed? Simple things should be simple. Not annoying.
Slashdotted and Perlcasted on the same day!
Today a review of Time Management for System Administrators appeared on Slashdot. Hello to all my friends at Slashdot and OSDN (now OSTG). Thanks for the kind words about 'da book!
Just as important, today PerlCast.com published my interview with them. You can listen to it here. I had a great time doing the interview and I hope you have just as much fun listening to it.
(Oh, and I really like this comment posted on Slashdot!)
It's about time
Various CEO's write their thoughts (sometimes humorously) about Time and Time Management in this month's Fast Company.
40-minute Time Management Video
40 minutes of tips from Time Management for System Administrators can be viewed online for free. The video gives a good basic understanding of the kind of information you'll get in the book.
Watch my Time Management video for free on Google Video
Time Management on Google Video Friday is my birthday. Instead of asking for a gift, I'm giving one. For the last month I've been working to produce the following 45-minute video that highlights many of the techniques in the new O'Reilly book "Time Management for System Administrators".
Time Management -- the first copy!
I got my first copy of Time Management for System Administrators via FedEx on Friday. That means it will be in the bookstores very soon!
Frapper
I'm making a map of people that own (or have pre-ordered) Time Management for System Administrators. Check it out:
www.frappr.com/tomontime
Pre-order Time Management for Sysadmins on Amazon!
I'm pleased to announce my new book, "Time Management for System Administrators" from O'Reilly and Associates.
You can now pre-order it on Amazon.com
For overworked system administrators everywhere, Time Management for System Administrators focuses on strategies that can help you work through daily tasks and be able to handle critical situations that inevitably arise. Written by the co-author of the popular book, The Practice of System and Network Administration (Addison-Wesley), Tom Limoncelli teaches interrupt management, to-do-lists/follow-through, calendar management, and life tools in Time Management for System Administrators. Intermixed with these skills are tips on doing things more efficiently and eliminating time wasters.
Heard any good rumors lately?
You may have heard a rumor that I'm working on a book called "The Art of Time Management for System Administrators." However, have you heard the big suprise? We've licensed cartoons from User Friendly for the book.
Now I just have to find someone to write the forward. Suggestions?
Don't brag about overextending yourself
System administrators often find themselves over-extended, skipping vacations, and so on. I often find myself coaching people on ways to set limits, have fruitful and relaxing vacations, and so on.
Someone recently forwarded me this link which talks about the difference between US and EU attitudes about work.
