Time Management for System Administrators - O'Reilly's Latest Release

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com


Time Management From A Geek's Perspective
O'Reilly Releases "Time Management for System Administrators"

Sebastopol, CA--Most time management books are written for people who have
some difference between "work" and "play" in their lives.  They're written
for people who can be persuaded to give up on a problem, or at least pause
in pursuing a solution. They're written for people who react negatively at
being interrupted in their work to help you set your digital watch. In
short, most time management books are not written for a typical system
administrator. But "Time Management for System Administrators" by Thomas
A. Limoncelli (O'Reilly, US $24.95) is written by a man who can date two
people at once (he insists they both knew about the other) and still find
time to keep the servers running.

As David Blank-Edelman says in his foreword to the book, "Tom's first book
'The Practice of System and Network Administration' does a superb job of
telling you how to build a sane and organized infrastructure." His new
book, however, tells the reader how to stay sane and organized while doing
it.

This short, practical volume will really help. As Limoncelli puts it
"Within the first couple of pages you will learn how to save an hour per
week.  If you can find seven other tips like it, you'll save eight hours
per week, which is one 'work-day.'  Saving a work-day per week is 2.5
work-months per year.  What would you do with 2.5 extra months each
year?"

Limoncelli  starts out with some principles of time management most useful
to system administrators before the first important lesson: "How to deal
with an interrupting customer without sounding like a jerk." Or, as the
title of Chapter 2, puts it "Focus vs. Interruptions." According to
Limoncelli , this is the single most important lesson of the book, "System
administrators can't get their job done when they are constantly
interrupted by users with questions and requests. The book puts a heavy
emphasis on controlling interruptions, reducing them and better handling
them when they get through your interruption shield. The typical office
worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, email, instant
message, or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight
uninterrupted minutes for the brain to get into a really creative state."


Among other skills, the reader learns how to:
-Manage interruptions
-Eliminate timewasters
-Keep an effective calendar
-Develop routines for things that occur regularly
-Focus on the task at hand
-Prioritize based on customer expectations
-Document and automate processes for faster execution

Limoncelli has more than fifteen years of system administration experience
and has taught workshops on time management at conferences since 2003. He
had good reasons for writing "Time Management for System Administrators":
"I overhear people at parties complaining about their system
administrators not managing their own time very well. I manage my time
well and thought I could put my techniques on paper and help a lot of
people. The book is only 200 pages, so it's a fast read. If you don't have
time to read this book, you need this book."

As Blank-Edelman says in the foreword, time management would be futile if
sys admins didn't have two things on their side:

1) Themselves
2) Tom Limoncelli

Additional Resources:

Chapter 4, "The Cycle System," is available online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/timemgmt/chapter/index.html

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/timemgmt/

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0569007...

Time Management for System Administrators
Thomas A. Limoncelli
ISBN: 0-596-00783-3, 200 pages, $24.95 US, $34.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com
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Sebastopol, CA 95472

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