I read Thomas Limoncelli’s Time Management for System Administrators when I was at Homestead and needed to better organize myself. There the problem was that I had several very long running projects that moved along so slowly that they’d get lost in the day-to-day shuffle or just outright forgotten. At Joyent things are much different, I’m not in an extremely fast moving and constantly evolving environment servicing hundreds of customers and developers both internal and external, all while trying to keep moving toward long range goals. We joke that everything that comes up on a day-to-day basis is “Priority #1″, because half-way through working on that priority something else takes over as the new “Priority #1″. Time management use to be helpful, now its absolutely essential.
I’ve chronicled in the past my move from an OpenZaurus SL-5500 PDA (third best PDA ever, trailing the Newton MP-2100 and Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L) to a FranklinCovey paper-planner. The Zaurus lasted about a week when I wasn’t very busy, as soon as things got moving faster dealing with the PDA, batteries dying, managing daily todo lists, etc, just got out of hand. People make fun of me for using a paper planner when I’m Mr. Hardcore Geek, but honestly no PDA can keep up with my schedule.
My fully fleshed out time management tool set has been refined to:
- FranlinCovey Midtown Open Binder (Pocket Size; fits easily in jeans or kilt pocket)
- Monticello Daily Planning Pages (All the pages you need to get rolling for 1 year)
- Monticello Cutaway Daily Notes Pages (For those massively out of control days when 2 pages isn’t enough)
- Monticello Lined Pages (For jotting out design ideas or meeting notes)
- Storage Case (For archiving old pages.. know exactly where you were on July 7th at 2pm!)
- Fisher “Bullet” SpacePen: (Fits perfectly with the Pocket Size binder, about half its hight)
- Fisher “Bullet” Fine Refills: (Make even more space in your planner with a Fine ballpoint)
Thats my setup, thats whats proven to work for me.
When ever you try to improve yourself or your habits, the big question is always with regards to whether or not it’ll stick. I’m happy to say that I just looked in my storage case and I’ve got almost 6 months of pages with something on every single one. The benefits have been incredible.
- I’m happier.
- My stress level has dropped significantly. High, but well managed.
- I’m not afraid all the time! I don’t avoid people because I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.
- I’m far more productive.
- I’m not forgetting all those great ideas that pop up and then vanish.
Tamarah has really been impressed with the results. I still fail to complete things and things still get slipped through the cracks, but those things are now because I didn’t see an important email buried in my inbox and not because I simply forgot. I still haven’t completed a lot of things that I want to or need to do, but at least I know what they are. The key here has been managing the insanity, not learning a technique to add 6 hours to each day.
Stress is the big thing. I hated going to bed and dwelling on what I forgot to do or coming up with excuses because I knew my DBA wanted something but I couldn’t remember what.
That said… I’m finding that this is really just part of a larger journey. I’ve been reading some various books on time management, ethics, management, and skills growth in general, all of which I recommend:
- First, Break All The Rules
- Now, Discovery Your Strengths HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
- First Things First (Important Point: “Don’t confuse urgency for importance”)
- The Speed of Trust
- The Art of Project Management
I’m growing significantly. This is partly because of my desire to grow and partly because as “Director of Systems” I want to really embrace the role and excel. This is my ship now and I want to do the best that I can for my users, both internal and external, and colleagues.
The direction I’m heading in now is toward better understanding Project Management. Like I said earlier, trying to drive long term goals forward in a constantly changing environment is really difficult, especially when your engineering that future, not just buying and implementing it. While this isn’t strictly software development, a lot of the same principles apply, the product is the product when you strip out the chapter on UML from whatever book you’ve got. Writing specs for where the product should be and rev’ing things rather than just slapping things up slowly over time is looking like a wise things more and more.
In addition, I’ve also become a Wiki addict. This is shocking given that I hate Wiki’s with a passion. I’ve long been an advocate of source-controlled flat-text or LaTeX/DocBook documentation, but when the world changes so quickly and your increasing the amount of documentation exponentially each week only a Wiki can keep up. Several weeks ago I found an abandoned installation of MediaWiki on an internal TextDrive system and I’ve since rallied the entire company around it, making us all better informed and eager to share. It also means that when it comes time to add more staff we’ll spend far less time teaching them and allow them to be far more productive out of the gate.
Thats my story so far anyway. If you haven’t taken Time Management for System Administrators really seriously I’d encourage you to re-read it and evaluate your situation. As sappy and stupid as this sounds it really has helped change my life for the better.
The Zaurus may be a nice old geek toy, but calling it the best PDA ever is just a tad removed from reality.
The best PDA ever is the one that is the most easy and unobtrusive to use in daily life. It’s one that synchs with no muss whatsoever as soon as you put it in a cradle by your desk. It’s one that has a kick-ass calendaring and to-do functionality that not only mimics paper but goes beyond that.
Apart from the calendaring part, any Windows Mobile PDA will meet that specification, and if you buy a compatible calendar replacement/enhancement for it like Pocket Informant and further enhance it with something like SPB Diary to get the most important stuff visible on the default Today screen, you have a PDA that will run circles around an old Zaurus as a PDA.
Admittedly, to get full use out of it you need something to synch it to, which is probably going to be Outlook, so if one is in Solaris land entirely things just won’t work smoothly. It’s stuff like integration with desktop apps and other devices for instance where Windows really shines, or rather where other OS’es really stink.
There are tons of reasons to dislike being stuck in a Windows world using Outlook and Exchange but for people who want to stay organised and connected electronically, it’s the only real game in town.
Personally, I need a device that beeps at me to do stuff. Paper just won’t work for me, even though it is a more “organic” approach.
Aside from the fact that “beeping at you as a reminder” is very handy, there’s also an added benefit of using Calendar software on your PC: shared calendars.
By publishing your own calendar you’re making it easier for other people to adjust their schedule to yours. Need to schedule a meeting/change/whatever? Just see when someone appears to be available.
/me huggles his iBook. It may not be as portable as a PDA or a normal agenda, but it organises my whole life for me
Beep me please.
ssh@solaris-box
at 11:50
at> echo E-mail my phone with message! | mail 123456789@messaging.sprintpcs.com
at> ^D
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Very interesting article: “Time Management: Checkup”
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