Time Management and ADD/ADHD
Someone recently asked me if TM4SA is good for people with ADD/ADHD or "just normal people"?
First, I should say I'm no expert at ADD/ADHD but I was diagnosed as "hyper-active" in the mid-70s, which was before we had terms like ADD/ADHD (or if we did, they weren't commonly used term). I think that I developed some of my techniques out of trying to survive being hyper-active.
I know that some people with ADD/ADHD find it comforting to be able to "fall into" a structured system like "The Cycle" (the name of the technique discussed in the book). Certainly when I'm feeling frustrated and flustered, I find that if I "turn on" The Cycle, it makes it easier for me to "turn off" distractions and get focused.
I do mention ADD/ADHD at one point in the book when discussing multi-tasking. Too little multitasking is inefficient, and too much is confusing. That's true with anyone. I've had friends with ADD/ADHD tell me that they feel more comfortable multitasking (I think their words were, "I can't work unless I'm multi-tasking."). My suggestion here is that the "right balance" is different when you are younger than when you are older: consider re-evaluating where the pendulum has swung every few years. Everyone is different, and we change over time. Working where you are optimal is important. Personally, I a different every day depending on how much sleep I got the night before!
I'll throw the question back to the readers of this blog: If you are ADD/ADHD, did you find TM4SA useful? I'd love to hear from people.
Strata @ SCALE, Los Angeles, Feb 9, 2007
Strata will be speaking at the 5th Annual SCALE conference. Her talk is titled The Secrets of Computer Technology Explained: for Every Woman. We hope to see you there!Tom traveling to Zurich and Dublin, 20-Jan to 3-Feb, 2007
Tom will be in Zurich and Dublin to speak at internal corporate events Jan 20-Feb 3, 2007. He's available to speak at user groups or book signings. Contact me.Tom @ Unigroup, NYC, Thu, Nov 18, 2007
Tom will be presenting his talk "Site Reliability at Google" at Unigroup in NYC in January. The meeting is open to all.Apple iPhone leaked! Accidentally shipped to customer via FedEx! Pictures!
No, silly. No such thing happened. In fact, I'm betting there won't be an iPhone announced next week.
Apple knows to only make one major announcement per conference. Last year it was the Intel thing. This time it will be iTV, or whatever they're going to call it. He's already announced that he'll be announcing it. Why muddy the message by announcing two things?
This is a lot like the constant theme I make in Time Management for System Administrators from O'Reilly. (Note: to the new readers: this book is useful for anyone in IT, software development, and even non-geeks if you skip certain chapters). The theme of "focus".
"Focus" is concentrated effort. Focus means not trying to do too many things at once. It means using 100% of your brain on the current task so you can get it done efficiently. Nearly every chapter mentions focus in some way. For example, why are interruptions from users and co-workers so bad? Because it disrupts our focus. Interruptions are the national enemy of focus. In fact, the first chapter is all about interruptions: Ways to get fewer of them, how to be better at handling the ones that you do get, how to multi-task more efficiently, and how to sucker your co-workers into taking your interrupts. (Um... I mean, "how to share the joy with your co-workers").
Thanks for reading this blog post. My apologies to anyone that thought they'd be reading about a new product from Apple. I'm a big Mac fan... since they adopted a Unix base for their OS I have owned 2, work has paid for 4 just for me. However, remember to keep your focus: Reading rumor web-sites should be a task on your todo list under the "fun" or "entertainment" category. Otherwise it is basically a waste of time. It's not an efficient use of "work time". Watch the streaming broadcast of the presentation or read the summary afterwords. That's better time management for sure.
And if you have a typepad id, you can post a comment telling me how wrong I was for writing this. :-)
Tom at EverythingSysadmin.com
Book Recommendation: What All Network Administrators Know
I just came across Douglas Chick's book, "What All Network Administrators Know". I immediately rushed to add it to our web page of recommended titles (scroll to the bottom).
One of the problems with TPOSANA is that it really focuses on big sites. This book is perfect for sysadmins that are just getting started or are at a small site. It is down to earth, very practical, and contains tons of excellent advice. (If you want proof, preview it on Amazon by clicking on the "random page" button.)
Time management diets?
A diet for TV watching? For email lists? For meetings?
One of the most common "New Years Resolutions" is to go on a diet. If you aren't sure, pay attention to the TV commercials last night... most were for products related to losing weight, getting into shape and giving up smoking. (The rest are champagne commercials which, I guess, are optimistic that you will remember their brand 11.5 months from now when you are preparing for next year's party.)
From a time management perspective, there are three diets I recommend: A TV diet, and a mailing list diet, and a meeting diet.
The TV diet is easy. Pledge that from now on, any time you add a TV show to the list that your Tivo/PVR records, you will remove at least one other TV show. As the amount of television in your life gets reduced, use this newly freed time for those projects you wish you had time for, like spending time with your loved ones or reading that book on Linux internals, or whatever you'd rather be doing. I wish Tivo had a feature where if you deleted a 1-hour show from your "Season Pass" list, it would ask you what you are going to do with that time instead. You would type in, "Play outside with my nephew". After that, you'd get a 60-minute block of time each week when your TV displays nothing but "Play outside with your nephew!" That would be awesome.
The mailing list diet is a similar strategy. Every time you join a new email list, pledge to remove yourself from one or two lists that you've found to be less useful. While finding better/faster ways to manage the email you receive is a good thing, it's even better to just plain receive less email. Today is January 1st, and like the first of every month I got a notice from every Mailman-maintained list reminding me that I'm subscribed. I have email filters that process messages from most of these lists and help me read those messages more efficiently. However today I looked at some of the "monthly reminders" with a careful eye and realized that I could really do without a few of those lists. They all had filters that sent the messages to a "read someday if you have free time" folder. Yeah, like that's gonna ever happen. I've now unsubscribed from those lists.
One of those lists, by the way, was a particularly high-volume mailing list that I was staying on "just in case I ever need to speak up and ask a question." I hadn't actually read a message from that list in ages.
I unsubscribed and made a note of how to re-subscribe if I ever needed. My hard disk thanks me.
I seem to add myself to new email lists all the time, sometimes casually. Having a monthly ritual of removing myself from 1-2 is a big win. I'm glad that Mailman sends those reminders.
The meeting diet can help you have more time to work while at work. Pick the least useful meeting that you attend each week and figure out how to eliminate it. Maybe it is optional, and you start only attending when you are particularly needed, or if the agenda lists something you need to know. If it doesn't have a pre-announced agenda, politely inform the meeting owner that Tom Limoncelli says that you should refuse to attend meetings without pre-announced agendas; that if he respected the need for attendees to manage their time well he would invest a few minutes in preparing an agenda and emailing it out before the meeting. (find a polite way to say that... if you get fired I can't help ya). If many people from your group are attending someone else's meeting, pick a delegate to attend and take notes for the others (and get someone else to be the delegate! Take turns otherwise). If the least useful meeting that you want to eliminate is the one meeting you are required to attend (i.e. your weekly staff meeting) then make a new years resolution to sit down with that person and figure out how to make it more useful. My favorite technique? Start exactly on time (that often saves 10 minutes), end on time (that encourages people to be brief), pre-announce the agenda (so speakers know there are other people that still have to speak), cut the meeting time in half and tell people they have to really be brief, and finally... require all able-bodied attendees to stand for the entire length of the meeting. It's amazing how efficient the meetings will become when everyone is standing. Another benefit is that you can have those meetings in a hallway... no need to fight with other groups about who gets to use the conference room when. Another benefit? People are more focused because they can't use their laptops to IM while standing.
What other diets can you go on that will help your time management? I'd love to hear from you!
