Thomas Limoncelli - Time Management for System Administrators

Schools have an obvious cycle. There are projects related to the major milestones of the year: arrival of new students, registration, budget process, finals, graduation, summer.

Hiring has a certain periodic pattern also. For example, if you need to hire entry-level people just out of school, the hiring process often starts by advertising at colleges in February with the hopes of filling jobs with new graduates in May. Similarly, people with more experience might be older and, if they have kids, will want to move between school years, not during. Other factors may affect end-of-the-year hiring. Rarely have I been able to get hiring approval in December, sometimes because the people who approve such things are on vacation, but often because no new hires are permitted so as to keep the end-of-year numbers looking good. Schedule your hiring around these cycles.

I love working in cyclic industries. It makes planning things a lot easier. In fact, when I'm not in a cyclic industry, I try to find the unofficial cycle, or, when possible, move the company into a cycle. One software company I worked at had no consistency in their software releases, and I became the advocate for an n -month cycle until one was adopted. The benefits are company-wide: marketing, operations, and budgeting can plan around the cycle, and it nearly eliminates the problem of developers scheduling vacations at inopportune times.

Your company has a similar business cycle. It might be as fast as once a month or as long as a year. If you work at NASA, it might be as long as a multiyear space mission. If you work in politics, it might be as regular as the legislative cycle or the campaign cycle.

Take some time to figure out your company's cycle. You might want to ask your boss what he thinks the business cycle is. Once that is done, consider the following questions:

What is the business cycle for this company?

How can I better schedule my projects?

When is the optimal time to schedule my time off?

Can the system administration group better schedule its projects?

Can we turn the system administration processes into cycles that are linked to the light and busy parts of the business cycle?

If the business pattern is random, can we influence the business to make it more regular? Or can we simply establish a periodic IT schedule and see whether others plan around it?

Summary

Managing your calendar is important to you and your career. People associate punctuality with responsibility and reliability. People who miss appointments and forget about meetings don't get promotions.

Without a well-managed calendar, you risk missing important work and nonwork events. It is important to keep balance among work, family life, social life, volunteer work, personal projects, sleep, and so on. Your calendar can help you do that.

It is important to have a place to write down appointments (or meetings, events, and so on). Write down any appointments that you schedule. Don't agree to an appointment until you've checked your calendar.

Your calendar fits into The Cycle System by being where you record appointments, dates, milestones, and other information. When you plan your day, you start by using the calendar to plan today's schedule and to add items to today's to do list.

If you use a PAA, you can organize what you write into each calendar square. I write birthdays and anniversaries at the top, then any vacations and multiday events. I use the middle part of the square to make a mini schedule for the day: morning appointments first, lunch in the middle, and afternoon appointments next. I reserve the very bottom to write my plans for the evening.

When agreeing to appointments, consider your personal rhythms. If you have the choice, plan brain work during the hours that you are best at focusing.

When making plans with others, always check your calendar before you agree to the appointment. Don't be embarrassed to make the other person wait for you to find and open your organizer.

Automate the reminders of appointments. Set alarms on your PDA or use other technology (alarm clocks and so on) if you use a PAA.

PAA users can record repeating events by making a list of weekly, monthly, and yearly repeating events. On the first day of the week, write the weekly appointments into your calendar. On the first day of the month, write the monthly appointments. On the first day of the year, fill out your yearly repeating events.

Most companies have a yearly rhythm. For example, retail often has a busy time around December. If you identify the rhythm, you can plan your projects around it. If you don't, you will find yourself swimming upstream. If your company doesn't have a defined rhythm, define one for yourself.

Chapter 7. The Cycle System: Life Goals

At 60, I want to retire and have the financial means to live comfortably.

In the next three years, I want to get promoted to team leader of my group.

In the next month, I want to learn more about Linux kernel internals.

In the next 24 hours, I want to have all my laundry washed and folded.

Someday, I want to date a porn star.

You can achieve anything you want if you set your mind to it. Most people don't follow a logical process of setting goals, figuring out the steps to reach those goals, and then taking those steps. Instead, they expect that things will "just happen."

After becoming extremely efficient in my time management, I realized that I had just spent a year being really good at what I was already doing. However, I was still basically in the same place as I was a year before. I hadn't moved to my dream home, the IT environment I managed hadn't really changed, and I was no closer to dating a porn star. I was spinning my wheels.

The truth is that you will achieve more if you set goals. Studies have found that successful people set goals and work toward them. Recent studies have also found that most unsuccessful people think that if they don't do anything, opportunities will still present themselves. In other words, unsuccessful people hope to be lucky. Hard work beats luck. Friends have told me that chess is a game of luck: the more they practice, the luckier they get. Success is the same way.

However, I'm intrigued by evidence that setting a goal without working toward it is better than not setting goals at all. This makes sense when you think about it. If you haven't determined what your goals are, you can't spot the few opportunities that do cross your path by chance. Suppose your boss asks your team if anyone would like to help planning next year's budget. That sounds like a lot of work with no reward. I'd completely understand if you wanted to avoid it. However, if you had determined that one of your goals was to be promoted to team leader, you would see this as an opportunity to be involved in the long-range planning for the group. If your goal was to move into management, you might see this as an opportunity to see how the budget process works to better prepare you for management. Alternatively, if your goal is to stay technical and prevent any effort by others to promote you into management, this is also an opportunity: it's an opportunity to not accidentally raise your hand! (I've seen too many good technical people accidentally fall into management against their will.)

The techniques covered so far in this book are excellent for getting all those little things done and getting through your day, but what about the big things that take years to achieve?

Begin with the end in mind by asking the big questions:

What do I want my IT organization to be like two years from now?

What do I want to have accomplished in my career five years from now?

Where do I want to be socially and financially 10 years from now?