Time Management for System Administrators

Time Management for System Administrators

Thomas A. Limoncelli

EditorMike Loukides

EditorDavid Brickner

Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

O'Reilly Media

About the Author

Thomas A. Limoncelli is an internationally respected author and speaker on many topics, including system administration, networking, and security. A system administrator since 1988, he now speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from firewall security to time management. He has worked for Cibernet, Dean For America, Lumeta, Bell Labs/Lucent, AT&T, and Mentor Graphics. He and Christine Hogan co-authored The Practice of System and Network Administration (Addison Wesley). He holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. He publishes a blog on www.EverythingSysadmin.com.

Foreword

Note to self:

Dear Self, (because what else are you going to say?)

Remember to upgrade the LDAP server. Remember to patch the security hole in zlib and every other package that links to it. (On second thought, are there packages that don't link to it?) Remember to plan for another 10x upgrade in storage capacity. Remember to debug the boss's Outlook problems or, at the very least, have the necessary goat entrails on hand to begin the process. Remember to redo the Oracle installation. See if there are any Wikis that would work better than the one we are using. Rewrite the user account system, and this time make sure it deals with the cases they swore would never occur in the physical world. Be sure that it is Sarbanes-Oxley compliant, ISO9000 certified, and Kosher l'Pesach. Check that your staff's projects are all humming along nicely. Read the LISA conference proceedings from the last two years to make sure you aren't missing anything useful for your infrastructure. Then, if you have time left over, start planning what you are going to do next week.

No, the fact that 'plan a vacation' didn't hit the list again for the 73rd consecutive week shouldn't bother you. Nor should the incident where your spouse literally tipped over laughing after hearing you were going to write a foreword for a time management book. Or should it?

Perhaps you should just take heart in the Henry Kissinger quote, 'There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.'

Well, anyway. Got to get back to work.

Yours in Service,

me

Does this sound familiar to you (well, besides the spouse part, which really did happen to me)?

Tom's first book, co-written with Christine Hogan (now Lear), has become a seminal work in the sysadmin field. The Practice of System and Network Administration does a superb job of telling you how to build a sane and organized infrastructure by following a number of best practices. But there's only one chapter in that tome that tells you how to keep yourself sane and organized during this process. That's where this book comes in.

But why do sysadmins need their own time management book? I know I've read my fair share of generic texts on this subject over the years. In this book, Tom does an excellent job of nailing the facets of the job that make time management particularly tricky for our profession. I just want to add on to this by describing a few parts of the typical sysadmin persona that further complicates matters.

First off, most sysadmins are tenacious problem solvers. They will attach themselves to a problem like a bulldog and not let go until the problem relents. Other tasks, such as appointments and life support (like food or sleep), become secondary as they persevere, and work on the problem either in person or in their head far beyond the usual time limits. For people who habitually say, 'Just one sec, I almost have this fixed,' time management can be a challenge.

A second common trait I've noticed in myself and in my colleagues is a genuine desire to help people, to support them in the use of an unfriendly or unforgiving technology, and to make things work so other people can get things done. This trait is definitely commendable, but if it gets noticed that you can and are able to help, others will ask you for it more and more. The universe gravitates toward clue, so the end result is a life I usually describe as 'one big tech support call.' When my