Time Management

Last week as my Valentine’s Day present from Kate, I had her get me a book called Time Management for System Administrators. Over the last few weeks I’ve been feeling very swamped and in order to make my day less hectic and better handle all the requests coming in I realized I needed to find some way to become better organized. I had looked over a few things before I got this book and had actually read some of it on Safari. The book itself really isn’t anything ground breaking, it does bring to light many of those things that you already know but don’t seem to want to acknowledge. One of the simplest ideas I’ve taken from the book is to write things down. Your brain thinks it’s smart and can remember everything, but it can’t, most people have a very limited amount of items they can keep in mind. So I’ve purchased a Franklin Planner and having started to write things down I’ve noticed my stress load lighten. Once I write it down I don’t always have that nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something and when I close my planner at the end of the day I know what projects I’ve pushed to the next day and I’ve recorded which ones I’ve finished. Other sections of the book I found that were helpful included documentation, when to automate, and there is even a section on managing your boss. In the beginning of the book they recommend the book for system administrators and not for programmers, I would change that to it not being recommended for programmers with one job task. If you are a programmer that is spreading yourself over multiple projects, doing maintenance as well as support this would be a great book for you too.

I’d give this book five stars and I would say the most similar book on an entirely different subject matter would be The Richest Man in Babylon.