Perhaps a year or so ago, I discovered the book “Time Management for System Administrators” and, after reading just a few pages, could definitely relate. It is the first book that I read cover to cover in the last several years. Newly motivated, I began implementing some of the things that Limoncelli wrote about.
Now, several months later, I find myself again in the same spot. My interest in “Getting Things Done” seems to come and go. Having recently taken the time to sit down, evaluate a number of things in my life, and making some decisions, I know that I will have even less time in the near future to get done all of the things I need to do. It is time, once again, for me to focus on getting organized and making the most efficient use of my time.
One thing that I remember from “Time Management for System Administrators” was unsubscribing from mailing lists. Like most other sysadmins, I’m a member of a large number of mailing lists, both at work and at home (though there’s a very blurry line between the two). At work, there’s only a few mailing lists I could really remove myself from without affecting my job (and those are very low traffic as well). My “personal” e-mail address is subscribed to a number of mailing lists, however — I intentionally keep my work address off of “non-work” mailing lists (even though some of them are definitely related to work: security lists, “new version” announcements, etc.).
A good example would be the Fedora Project mailing lists. I’m a Fedora Ambassador but, to be quite honest, I don’t really do much in that regard. I set up a Fedora booth at the IU Linuxfest and have mailed out a number of Fedora CDs and DVDs as a part of the Fedora Free Media Program. I promote and use Fedora in the courses that I teach and to the other folks who have to work around me. Other than that, however, I don’t do much else and yet I am still subscribed to a number of mailing lists related to this, even though I delete probably 75% of the e-mails from those lists without even reading them. In an effort to save a few moments out of my day, therefore, I just unsubscribed from every “non-essential” Fedora mailing list.
This is nothing against Fedora, of course. It’s simply a matter of time (literally!). Fedora just happens to stick out as the majority of e-mail to my “personal” account is from those lists. There are a number of other lists that I’m on that I don’t really need to be, and those will be going away as well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a number of unsubscribe requests to confirm.
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