Time Management for System Administrators

Based on Tom Limoncelli's life-saving book, this course covers Tom's Cycle System. These time management tips and practices can greatly increase the efficiency of any single sysadmin, and when applied in a group their effects can yield a quantum shift in productivity. They also give the sysadmin practitioner greater peace of mind and more power and control.

Student Successes

Drilling down from "goals" to "what are you doing monday?" was an eye opener in terms of showing me how this sort of thing fits together.

The goals exercise was the best part of it. It made the rest of the concepts real.

I've even suggested to my boss that the sysadmin group do something similar at one of our staff meetings. I think he's also curious about whether you're available to teach, but I need to find a copy of the slides to show him and I really don't know what will come of that.

L.G., 23 Jan 2012

I think that "The Cycle" system is a pretty comprehensive approach to time planning, but very simple concept to implement. And it looks very practical in it's approach. i definitely plan to follow up on it and give it a try right away. One thing it really encourages you to be very strategic in your thinking, which also helps with achieving long term goals. Putting some time to think about the important long term goals both personal and professional was a real eye opening for me, since I pretty much discovered that I am spending a lot of time and effort on things that are not important from the long term goal perspective.

I liked also the attitude towards the vacation time -- you know as a sysadmin you always feel guilty for taking too much vacation time in one lump, now I will feel guilty for not taking vacation time instead :-) It also helps to encourage your colleagues to take on more ownership and responsibilities over company's infrastructure while you are on vacation.

O.B., 15 Jan 2012