[lopsa-discuss] LOPSA Book Club - December: Time Management for System Administrators

[Mark Ramm]

> How many of you do a variation of this and work an hour from home before
> going to the office? Working for a university, my schedule is somewhat
> flexible so I like to take advantage of it by checking email and
> planning the day in the peace of my home. It is the one place I can
> (almost) guarantee no distractions.

I do this at least 3 times a week (when I don't have early morning
meetings) and I find that it makes a world of difference for my sanity
during the day.  I'm not sure that I am more productive, but I am
absolutely certain that I am calmer and more ready to "roll with the
punches"  when I know that I've looked through my "to-be-done list"
and my e-mail.

If I don't have time to do my daily setup ritual, I constantly have
this nagging feeling when working on one thing that there is probably
something more critical that I ought to be doing instead.

So far, the best time management advice I've found was from the
Getting Things Done book by David Allen.  And I have to say that it
revolutionized my life, and that of one of my direct-reports who does
help desk work full time.   Before implementing a system based on GTD
he was constantly behind, and I quite a bit of "frustration based
feedback" about him, in the 4-5 months since we came in on a Sunday
and got him organized, I have not received any frustration feedback,
and have had any number of people come to me spontaneously to tell me
what a great job he has been doing.

Of course, the GTD book has nothing specific to System Administrators,
so I am very much looking forward to receiving my copy of Tom's book
from Amazon this week.

--Mark Ramm