Time Management for System Administrators

About This Book

This is a 'technique' book. The art of time management can be done with a paper and pencil or a fancy PDA. The first part of the book helps you deal with the basics of time management—better ways to deal with the interruptions that keep you from getting work done, and managing your to do list so that you don't forget any requests and are able to get them done on time, or at least based on your priorities. This book will help you turn chaotic, unplanned activities into easier-to-use routines that are less likely to be forgotten. After that, I expand the techniques and teach you to apply them to managing your calendar/datebook, email, stress, and life goals. Lastly, I cover techniques that can accelerate your career: eliminating time wasters, using documentation to save yourself time, and tips for automating what you do so that it is less error prone and takes less of your time.

Now that you know what this book is about, I should explain what this book is not about. This book is not about how to use a PDA, nor which personal information management software to use. It is not a comparison of 50 to do list management software packages. It is not 'the missing manual' for PalmOS or Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Operating System. This book is about you and how to improve your life through better time management.

Assumptions This Book Makes

This book makes no assumptions about the expertise and/or technical savvy of the reader. However, people earlier in their system administration career may find it more useful. The more stressed out you are about your job, the more valuable this book will be.

Chapter 13 contains actual code samples, so some prior knowledge is required to understand and apply these examples, but they're nothing the typical administrator doesn't already know.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Plain text

Indicates menu titles, menu options, menu buttons, and keyboard accelerators (such as Alt and Ctrl).Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, directories, and Unix utilities.Constant width

Indicates commands, options, switches, variables, attributes, keys, functions, types, classes, namespaces, methods, modules, properties, parameters, values, objects, events, event handlers, XML tags, HTML tags, macros, the contents of files, or the output from commands.Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values.

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Warning

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Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you're reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O'Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product's documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: 'Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli. Copyright 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc., 0-596-00783-3.'