1. Chapter 1 Time Management Principles

   1. What's So Difficult About Time Management?

   2. The Principles of Time Management for SAs

   3. It Won't Be Easy

   4. Summary

2. Chapter 2 Focus Versus Interruptions

   1. The Focused Brain

   2. An Environment to Encourage Focus

   3. Interruptions

   4. Directing Interruptions Away from You

   5. You Can Say "Go Away" Without Being a Jerk

   6. Summary

3. Chapter 3 Routines

   1. Sample Routines

   2. How to Develop Your Own Routines

   3. Deleting Old Routines

   4. Summary

4. Chapter 4 The Cycle System

   1. Don't Trust Your Brain

   2. Why Other Systems Fail

   3. Systems That Succeed

   4. The Cycle

   5. Summary

5. Chapter 5 The Cycle System: To Do Lists and Schedules

   1. A Sample Day

   2. Other Tips

   3. Setting Up a PAA for Use with The Cycle

   4. Setting Up a PDA for Use with The Cycle

   5. Summary

6. Chapter 6 The Cycle System: Calendar Management

   1. How to Use Your Calendar

   2. One Calendar for Business and Social Life

   3. Repeating Tasks

   4. Know Your Personal Rhythms

   5. Know Your Company's Rhythms

   6. Summary

7. Chapter 7 The Cycle System: Life Goals

   1. The Secret Trick

   2. Setting Goals

   3. Planning Your Next Steps

   4. Schedule the Steps

   5. Revisit Your Goals Regularly

   6. Summary

8. Chapter 8 Prioritization

   1. Prioritizing Your To Do Lists

   2. Project Priorities

   3. Requests from Your Boss

   4. Summary

9. Chapter 9 Stress Management

   1. Overload and Conflicting Directions

   2. Vacation Time

   3. Yoga, Meditation, and Massage

   4. Summary

10. Chapter 10 Email Management

    1. Managing Your Email

    2. Jump Starting the Process

    3. Summary

11. Chapter 11 Eliminating Time Wasters

    1. What Is a Time Waster?

    2. Avoiding the Tempting Time Wasters

    3. Common Time Wasters

    4. Wasteful Meetings

    5. Strategic Versus Tactical

    6. Summary

12. Chapter 12 Documentation

    1. Document What Matters to You

    2. Wiki Technology

    3. Summary

13. Chapter 13 Automation

    1. What to Automate?

    2. How to Automate

    3. Simple Things Done Often

    4. Hard Things Done Once

    5. Letting Others Do Privileged Operations

    6. Summary

1. Appendix Epilogue

   1. What to Do with All Your "New" Free Time?

2. Colophon

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.

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of Time Management for System Administrators is a wolverine (Gulo gulo). Long admired for their strength, cunning, fearlessness, and voracity, wolverines are still a mysterious but respected animal. Native Americans considered them to be mythical trickster heroes and links to the spirit world. Wolverines have been personified and glorified in poetry and folklore for centuries:

Picture a weasel-and most of us can do that, for we have met that little demon of destruction, that small atom of insensate courage, that symbol of slaughter, sleeplessness, and tireless, incredible activity-picture that scrap of demoniac fury, multiply that mite some fifty times, and you have the likeness of a Wolverine. -Ernest Thompson Seton, 1909

Wolverines are the largest terrestrial member of the family Mustelidae, which includes weasels, skunks, minks, and otters. Like humans and bears, wolverines have plantigrade posture-they walk on the soles of their feet-helping them to move easily through soft, deep snow. Wolverines thrive in very cold climates-they are found throughout the holarctic taiga and tundra in North America and Eurasia-and they do not hibernate. During the day and night, solitary wolverines alternate between sleeping and foraging for food. However, their habits are not entirely known because they are difficult to track and study due to their large home range and low population density.

The wolverine is one of the smallest and most powerful predators at the top of the food chain. In fact, if a wolverine were the size of a bear, it would be the strongest animal on earth. But wolverines are still ferocious despite their diminutive stature. They are solidly built and immensely strong-a wolverine can drag a carcass three times its size for great distances. Wolverines don't hesitate to attack sheep, deer, or small bears, but their diet mostly consists of scavenging rather than hunting. Wolves and cougars will retreat from a freshly killed carcass when a pack of wolverines challenges them. However, wolverines don't subsist entirely on large ungulates; they also eat squirrels, hares, and berries. When food is scarce, wolverines will return to an abandoned carcass and feed on the pelt and frozen bones; their powerful dentition and associated musculature facilitate this foraging.

For centuries, humans hunted wolverines for their luscious fur, which is valued because frost brushes right off of it. With dwindling numbers and a slow reproductive rate, wolverines are climbing up the endangered species list as nimbly as they climb trees.

Marlowe Shaeffer was the production editor and proofreader for Time Management for System Administrators. John Santini was the copyeditor. Colleen Gorman and Darren Kelly provided quality control. Johnna Dinse wrote the index. Loranah Dimant provided production assistance.

Karen Montgomery designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is from Wood's Illustrated Natural History. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Keith Fahlgren to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Marlowe Shaeffer.