Time Management For System Administrators

Time is a precious commodity, especially if you're a system administrator. No other job pulls people in so many directions at once. Users interrupt you constantly with requests, preventing you from getting anything done. Your managers want you to get long-term projects done but flood you with requests for quick-fixes that prevent you from ever getting to those long-term projects. But the pressure is on you to produce and it only increases with time. What do you do?

The answer is time management. And not just any time management theory--you want Time Management for System Administrators, to be exact. With keen insights into the challenges you face as a sys admin, bestselling author Thomas Limoncelli has put together a collection of tips and techniques that will help you cultivate the time management skills you need to flourish as a system administrator.

Time Management for System Administrators understands that an Sys Admin often has competing goals: the concurrent responsibilities of working on large projects and taking care of a user's needs. That's why it focuses on strategies that help you work through daily tasks, yet still allow you to handle critical situations that inevitably arise.

Among other skills, you'll learn how to:

• Manage interruptions
  
• Eliminate timewasters
  
• Keep an effective calendar
  
• Develop routines for things that occur regularly
  
• Use your brain only for what you're currently working on
  
• Prioritize based on customer expectations
  
• Document and automate processes for faster execution

What's more, the book doesn't confine itself to just the work environment, either. It also offers tips on how to apply these time management tools to your social life. It's the first step to a more productive, happier you.

About the Authors
Thomas A. Limoncelli is the author of O'Reilly's Time Management for System Administration. He is an internationally known author and speaker on many topics, including system administration, networking, security, and grassroots political organizing. 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, USA. He publishes a blog on EverythingSysadmin.com.