Time Management for System Administrators 144
genehack writes "System administrators have a stereotypical reputation for grumpiness and irritability. Sometimes this misanthropy is a cultivated pose, designed to deter casual or trivial requests that would take time away from more important activities like playing nethack and reading netnews. More often, however, sysadmins are disgruntled simply because they can't seem to make any headway on the dozens of items clogging up their todo lists. If you're an example of the latter case, you may find some help in Time Management for System Administrators, the new book from Thomas Limoncelli (who you may recognize as one of the co-authors of the classic The Practice of System and Network Administration). Read the rest of genehack's review.
Time Management for System Administrators | |
author | Thomas A. Limoncelli |
pages | 226 |
publisher | ORA |
rating | 8/10 |
reviewer | genehack |
ISBN | 0-596-00783-3 |
summary | Time management tips for sysdadmins |
This slim book (only 226pp) packs a large amount of helpful information about making better use of your time at work, so that you can make some headway on at least some of those tasks that have piled up around you, while still managing to have a life outside of work. One of Limoncelli's main points is that sysadmins have to develop some way of effectively dealing with the constant stream of interruptions in their life if they're going to accomplish anything. The other point is that they also need a good tracking system to make sure they don't lose track of new, incoming requests in the process of dealing with existing ones. The book continually reinforces these two points, and presents several alternative, complementary ways to accomplish them.
The first three chapters deal with high-level, generic issues: principles of time management, managing interruptions, and developing checklists and routines to help deal with the chaos of day-to-day system administration. The middle third of the book details how to use "the cycle system", Limoncelli's task management plan for sysadmins. Basically, it's a hybrid between Franklin-Covey A-B-C prioritization and day planning and David Allen GTD-style todo lists, with a few sysadmin-specific tweaks thrown in. The final chapters of the book address a grab-bag of issues: task prioritization, stress management, dealing with the flood of email that all admins seem to get, identifying and eliminating the time sinks in your environment, and documenting and automating your work-flow.
In general, I think this is a great book for sysadmins that are looking to begin addressing time management problems. People that have already done some investigation of time management techniques (like the aforementioned Franklin-Covey and GTD systems) may find less value here -- but I still think the book will be interesting, especially the chapters detailing the workings of "the cycle system". Personally, after reading this book, I don't see any reason to move away from my modified GTD system, but I have gone back to using some daily checklists, which are helping me keep on top of my repeating tasks a lot better. I suspect that any working sysadmin will take away at least two or three productivity-enhancing tips from this book."
You can purchase Time management tips for sysdadmins from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The most important lesson of time management (Score:5, Insightful)
The commitment required is not insubstantial. You will have to overcome years of bad habits.
It's not insurmountable, but don't think that by reading this (or any of the other books... I prefer 7 Habits myself) that you have learned time management. Reading the book is only the first step in a long journey.
It is worth it though. And I recommend it to anybody, especially to people who think their lives are so interrupt-driven that they couldn't possibly benefit from time menagement. Guess what? You're the folks who will benefit the most.
one way.. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Browse the net all day doing as little real work as possible. Take requests from users and wait 4 hours before doing each one. Keep a list of requests and check-off things as you do them, every once in a while getting embarassed because you didn't keep your word.
2) Do all requests right away. Answer all phone messages and emails right away. Get every request done in basically the time it took plus the 15 mins it took to finish what you were doing.
Method 2 was way better. The work ethic it takes is catchy too, and the whole company benefits. Both methods take the same exact amount of work, but with method 2 you don't wait . After two years like this, I was down to spending only 25% of the time on user jobs. ie) waiting time of zero for new jobs to get started. In my spare time I trained and programmed for the users eventually going from maintaining to writting apps.
You can be a solution or a problem, its up to you.
Quiet, I'm working! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hey, the network guys are seeing some suspicious traffic - "
"Later."
"Hey, our loads are skyrocketing - "
"Later."
"Hey, our front-end web servers have just crashed - "
"Later."
"Hey, the director of systems administration would like to speak with you - "
"Later."
"Hey, security's coming over - "
"Later."
"Sir, we'll need you to come with us."
"La - "
Well it changed my life (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize to people who've had time management classes some of it might seem redundant. I would suggest that before you disregard the book, you at least go to the bookstore and skim the forward and maybe even the first chapter. The author makes a point about time managements systems and courses in general, and how they generally don't fully apply to systems administrators (from his personal experience in taking those courses and reading those books).
In particular, I found the section about interrupt shielding very important.
Also the idea of prioritizing task items along "perceived" priorities. That is, if you have two tasks that are at highest priority and one takes 10 minutes and the other takes 4 hours, you do the ten minute task first. There's a good chance that someone else is unable to complete something until that task is done. You still get both done in 4:10 minutes, but to the guy who was waiting on the 10 minute task, you're a hero. A great way to increase your perceived value without doing anything extra at all.
Re:Some tips (Score:2, Insightful)
Why Grumpy? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about somebody write a book to give to the USERS to help them 1) document the error message, 2) learn how to unjam a printer, 3) how to change their own cartridges, 4) etc, etc. The list is huge.
Don't bitch about our grumpiness...its the only thing we have to fall back on under the scowls of all the users.
(gee, I hope I didn't sound too grumpy in this post
Re:Consider the source... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am extremely grateful that at my new job that I work with a team, and we're not "maxxed out" all the time. This allows us to be proactive rather than purely reactive.
WORK, LITTLE NEOSLAVES, WORK (Score:1, Insightful)
you can check out but you can never leave (your neoliberal masters have forced 3rd world countries with low costs of living to keep their minimum income requirements for americans immigrants quite high).
drink your red bull and other caffeine drinks. Massa watches behind you....
and when you have some free time, read a book about how you can work even harder.
and if you see something on the internet about those lazy europeans and their 6 weeks of vacation a year and their low cost nationalized healthcare and cheap universities? Just put it out of your mind...
work little neoslaves, work....
Users won't read the book (Score:3, Insightful)
Engage grumpy rant mode now!
It's hard to manage the time for some tasks when they are dependant upon waiting for other employees to go to lunch or go home before you can work on the resources they use - then they wonder why I'm just sitting about reading slashdot at work at 7:30pm some day - it's because I'm waiting for them to go home before I can put in an hour and a halfs work on their PC.
Some of the worst people to deal with are those users who also have time management issues - they've never had time to learn how to use a computer properly (or many other tasks important to their jobs) but must appear competant so they get defensive or dissmissive when you explain basic things to them. They will do things like call you out to a site at 8:30am for some urgent work, leave you waiting and having to find other things to do (remote admin to the main site over a slow link standing up in a noisy location) while they organise a social event until 4:15pm when they hand you the WRONG media. They then stand behind you telling you how urgent it is to do the install before 4:30pm or everyone's pay will be late - and saying things along the lines of "are we there yet, are we there yet" like a three year old child. After you determine that it is the wrong media (fairly sure at 4:15pm but assured otherwise - have the client convinced at 5pm) and finally locate it behind a filing cabinet after a half hour search (it's banking software - it had to be hidden) and get the software installed and set up in half an hour the client will tell everyone for the next two years how poor your time management skills are. "I called him here at 8:30am and he didn't finish until 6pm so all the pays are late - that young man has poor time management skills."
Another bad thing is the attention seekers. In one place where I had a short time contract some bastard who used being gay as an excuse to be obnoxious found to his surprise that the new contractors would come if called. Every two days some trivial request would come through - repeated every five minutes with threats and announcements of the employees importance (this clerk had no subordinates and low pay but was by his own account the second most important person in the company) if there was no action. On arrival I would be met with a lot of sexual innuendo and laughter (weird, I'm not gay or even good looking and didn't respond to any of the comments) - to fix a problem like a windows printer deliberately uninstalled so that I can reinstall it - or an attempt to get me to steal another sections resouces for them and move it into their area. Other less obnoxious attention seekers will turn up in the server room when there is a crisis and ask for help on something trivial or their home computer (the "if there's anything more important than me I want it taken out and shot" philosophy). The idea is that they are being shown that you consider something else more important than them, so they need to show others that you consider them as important as restoring the companies communications with the outside world so that customers can give the company money. These people are almost never in positions above that of the leader of a small team of two or three people.
The absolute worst people to deal with are those who have gained their position by being lovers of those in power, so may have no ability, are given busy work which they do incompetantly and cannot be dismissed even in extreme circumstances. I should not have to tell a 60 year old man to get out of the server room and never go in there, let alone smoke in there, again.
Some people have the idea that sysadmins are there to read manuals to them like bedtime stories to children. In many cases the sysadmin is the only one that has read the manual for something that is in daily use by large numbers of people - many users think they shouldn't have to read anything after they leave school so a book for users wo