[This is the 4th and final in a series of posts about "Getting Organized" using a better system and the Evernote tool-set for paperless notes (though you could do this with any such software).]

Getting Organized Series Outline

• Introduction and License Giveaway
• A Task’s Life
• The Death of a Task, Man
• 451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks

Welcome to the final post of the series. There will be a post the following week announcing the winner of the premium license from the license giveaway in the comments of the first post (contest entries close Friday 7/23).  We’ve talked about why I came to this software (and more importantly, a renewed desire to manage tasks); how I setup tasks in my system; and some ways I am attempting to add discipline.

We’ll finish this series by talking about some other features I use in this tool,my attempt to go paperless, what I plan on doing in the future and a few frustrations/concerns.

Before Starting – thanks to one of my readers, Chris who left an excellent comment in Part 3. (There are other great tips as well in the threads of these posts, worth checking out.) He gave us some good tips, a different program to try and I really liked his ideas for task priorities. If you recall, in part 2 I had priority titles like “Due Today, Due Soon, Due Someday, etc”. His are simpler and yet fully explain the priority, “Now!, Gotta, Outta, Wanna”. I like them and am thinking about trying them out for a while as replacements.

Burn The Notebooks

In part 1, I showed a picture of a typical notebook of mine. In a word: disheveled. Since installing Evernote a few weeks ago, I haven’t used a notebook once. I miss the uniball roller pens I love to write with but not that much; typing on the Macbook is also nice

I had several notebooks and I used them frequently. A good friend and a great resource on all things social media and blogging, Jon DiPietro who blogs about DomesticatingIT gave a great tip about blogging: “Always Be Collecting“. He suggests using a moleskin notebook and camera.  That is great, but.. I can’t read my notes and don’t always have the blog notebook (or the same one) with me. Now when an idea comes to me (even if in the middle of the night feeding the newborn), I reach over to wherever my smartphone is and I type a new note in the blog fodder category (If I am really tired or in a hurry, I won’t categorize.. it will be there in the inbox for me tomorrow). I have saved or created numerous ideas for work, blog topics, honey-do items, etc and that stimulates me to keep using the tool.

Several times now I have wanted to recall what we discussed in a meeting or a piece of tribal knowledge as I am still new to my company. Under my old system. I guarantee you I would have a 60% at best chance of finding the exact information in a notebook or single sheet of paper. I would then have an 80% chance of reading my scribbles, Now? I just search and find it. I can type fairly fast and I’m developing some short hand to consistently express the same thoughts the same way when typing the notes. I’ve even used the notes in a meeting to help someone else remember a point from a meeting.

I plan on banging away notes while at the PASS Summit sessions this year. Tasks will be things to research or look into in my own environment. Everything else will be blog topics or reference data for later on the gobs of knowledge gleaned. (Or the clever ways to insult people learned from Buck Woody).

To me, this is the biggest feature. The note taking is simple and works great. Adding the task management categories, notebooks and priorities made it even easier.

Burn The Business Cards

From any device with a camera, I can take a quick picture or iSight note (on the mac client) of a business card. Save it with the “persona” tag about which Mike the relationship is for and dump it into the contacts notebook. I don’t need your business card, just a picture. I have it on every device that I use Evernote with and I can search it (with OCR so not perfectly but fairly well). I can’t copy and paste the found text though (See wishlist). On the mac the process is a simple as:

1. Take a Picture of the card through EverNote’s iSight note

The back of my card says "Practice Your Restores!"

2. Save The Image To Evernote. Give it a title of the contact name, assign a tag. Add any other notes about the contact you wish to add

3. Search for the contact later in the contacts folder, or by contacts folder and which persona you know the contact through

My wife already told me - that is a big picture on the card...

I can do that with any picture, not just business cards. With the premium edition, I can also import just about any file format I wish to import and I can search through PDF files, I believe.

Burn A Tweet (Or E-Mail)

Ok, well I actually don’t mean with fire this time. I mean, burn a copy. With twitter interaction, I can send a tweet to @myen and it comes into my evernote account. The other day Karen Lopez (better known as @DataChick to the twitterers out there), who blogs at InfoAdvisors, sent out a tweet to a flickr picture with the message “this could be useful”. I agree, could use it in a post or a blog (but then I saw the Creative Commons license, no I can’t). But yeah, I can send myself a note through twitter. Same thing with e-mail, I can forward an e-mail to my evernote account and keep it there for a record or for an action item.

The Trunk

They recently launched an “app store” like feature called “The Trunk” where I can download apps that are designed to integrate with Evernote. There are some promsing applications out there and some neat ideas like scanning receipts/etc. into Evernote. One idea I had was to put all of my junk drawer (alright we have two junk drawers and a junk closet) paperwork into one of two places: Evernote and then the trash, or straight to the trash. I may still do this but not with as many items as I had wanted, as I don’t know how secure my PII would be on their servers. I may still scan them onto some app within my home network though. Using this tool has put me on a declutter kick and I think I’m liking the clean desk (STILL!) at work.

Blow Up These Problems!

Since I am talking a lot about a product (that, again, I am not receiving compensation from… In fact I approached them about giving away the premium license and they never got back to me…) I might as well talk about some of the frustrations/concerns:

• The Interwebs – One of the greatest features is one of the potential faults. What happens if World Cup fans all around the world want to take notes about tactics used in the games the next time? Services go down, in fact Evernote had some down time (not horribly long but they experienced it) just this week, after the first 3 posts were scheduled to go live and I had to make sure to add this. I will still have my notes but I can’t sync and can’t get all features (like the OCR on the mac. has to sync to server then back – seconds – to be searchable)
• Security - There is SSL for the data to go to the server. I can even encrypt selected text and receive my own pass phrase for decrypt. It is still all managed at the server and they don’t tell you a whole lot about the security. To get SSL encryption I had to upgrade to premium. I won’t be putting passwords and sensitive client/employer data in here that could cause issues if stolen. I also don’t know about their corporate security. What are their policies at their data center? Within their databases? It is a cloud based service that I don’t know a whole lot about.
• Backup - I perform exports on occasion of my notes to HTML for a local backup. The devices all receive all notebooks so I actually have copies in 3 places plus a backup. Plus whatever they do on their servers. Maybe it’s overkill, but I’m a DBA.
• Private Clouds – They don’t. What if I wanted to host my own evernote service for myself behind a firewall on my own equipment. I can’t. I don’t need their servers for this (save for the OCR perhaps)
• No great way to “Draw” on the mac. I can use a third party app like Skitch to do so but I wish I could easily and quickly drag shapes in when at a whiteboard session. I can take a picture but with the drawing, I can draw the “motion” of the whiteboard.

Series Summary

That’s it. I’ll answer questions you have about more specifics. Basically the important takeaway from this series, in my mind is, you can get organized. You can manage tasks. Even if you are borderline ADD. You need discipline and a system that works for you. The important system here for me is what I described in part 2 about collecting, organizing and prioritizing and then what I described in part 3 about getting the tasks done and enforcing discipline upon yourself. The tool you use matters not. Actually it does matter but only so far as you can answer this question with a yes, “Does the tool you use to manage your tasks appeal to you? Is it easy for you to use and do you stick with it?” If so, then great. If not, maybe it’s time to revisit it and get out of the “Oh crud! I forgot to do something, I’ll be home late tonight!!!” rut that I sometimes have been in.

As always, I welcome comments and discussion points. If it isn’t 7/24/10 (EDT) yet, go ahead and check out the first post and add a comment if you want to win the free premium license.

[This is part three in a series of posts about "Getting Organized" using a better system and the Evernote tool-set for paperless notes (though you could do this with any such software, I'd imagine).]

Getting Organized Series Outline

• Introduction and License Giveaway
• A Task’s Life
• The Death of a Task, Man
• 451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks

A Confession

The last post in this series didn’t help you, did it? I mean, sure, I gave you some priority ideas. I suggested you think about your multiple personas and assign stuff to them to do. All that is great but did it really help you? Here comes the confession – they didn’t help me. Those ideas don’t work for me…

Does your Task Management software include this? If so, let me know!

At least not alone. I can have all the features in a task management tool that I want or think I want and unless one feature is there – a killer robot that will be unleashed should I fail to do a task or get distracted – it just isn’t enough alone. Alas, even then after not being killed a few times it would lose its impact. So I have to create a system I want to follow.

Let’s get started and talk about some of the “soft skills” I am trying to employ to stay on track and kill tasks. And fix a problem that you could accuse me of:

You Lack Discipline

So I’m trying to gain some. I work for a company that really values thrift, productivity and getting it done while at work, more so than many places I’ve worked. I want to honor that and these ideas or mindsets seem to be working or at least seem promising.

Two Kinds Of Tasks = Two Types of Times for Tasks

I’m setting up “Focus Times” – I am blocking off time on my calendar, shutting down communication methods (save for phone – I’m a DBA) and putting my headphones on (actually helps me) and I work on the “Due Today” tasks in the Work notebook that require focus. I have even added (“FOCUS”) after some tasks in Evernote to help sort them out ahead of time. If a task is simple and requires less detail, I just do it when I can and e-mail interruptions are fine.

Send Me An E-Mail

If I get an action item packed e-mail that I need to be tickled about later, I forward it to the e-mail address Evernote sets up for my account. Poof. I have a new note in my inbox notebook to categorize, classify and prioritize as we discussed yesterday. I can also e-mail myself and I am going to give that e-mail address to my wife (for some reason the “World’s are colliding, Jerry!” episode of Seinfeld comes to mind) for those times when I “yes, dear” her but fail to remember to do it or if she wants to send a quick shopping list for me on my commute home.

Just Say No!

It isn’t an evil word. Not when said nicely anyway. If you don’t have the time required to perform a task with the right degree of focus, why say yes? You’ll stress yourself out trying to do it, perhaps end up rushing or at least end up sacrificing sleep to do it. It isn’t worth it. Just say no. Unless it is not a request or extra and then you might want to say yes or “I understand you wish me to work on x, but I also have y and z on my plate with tight due dates. Can you help me prioritize these tasks, dear leader?”

Check Yo’self!

Your tasks, that is. Setup times throughout the day to do this. If you use the system I described in part 2, it’s easy. I select my work notebook and then just click on each priority to see what is “Due Today”, “Ongoing”, “Due Soon” or “Due Someday” for my “employee persona” Things I’m looking for?

• Due Today Tasks are being planned and worked on. If not, do I intend to? If not? Why is it due today? Fix it!
• Due Soon Tasks are known and can I squeeze one in today? Any real quick ones that can be done in the next 5 minutes and give myself one less thing to do tomorrow? (If you read my post of lessons from planting garlic, you’ll remember that I believe in paying now where possible)
• Due Someday Tasks really are still tasks and can I do them or move them up? I’m liberal with waht I do with these as far as the circular file goes. (I’ll normally just do this in the AM)

Make It Feel Good

This is a bit cheesy, sure Admit it, though, it feels good to mark something as done.  If I want to stick with my approach to better task management I have to keep it motivating and receive a sense of accomplishment. Some ways I do this:

Not enough focus time that day, I guess.

Check Mark!

One of the things I missed about the paper lists was the ability to check off or scribble out a task. In Evernote, I can create a check mark widget and I use these for two purposes. One, while in a meeting if I am getting a task in the meeting note, I insert a check mark to remind me and create an action item later at the end of the meeting, or just tag the meeting note with the proper priority. More importantly, though, I can see what I’ve done and the more check marks I see, the happier I am.

Delete Notes

I miss that feeling of scrunching up the paper but it works. If I had a one off task that I don’t think I’ll need to show an accomplishment or reference notes from doing it. I enjoy putting a note into the trash can.

Sweat The Small Stuff

Now I know I said earlier in this series that if a task takes more time to manage, just do it and don’t mess with the system. I have another confession for you. Sometimes I’ll create a task and checkbox for a smaller task. Why? See Check! above. I like checking a task as complete.

Daily Task Note – Multiple Tasks

I have found that one way of tracking work for the day and planning the next task is to create one note and put the planned tasks due today in it. Sometimes I’ll even be inefficient and spend a minute or two grabbing tasks off of other notes that I want due today and putting them on that one note for the day. I’ll remove the “Due Today” tags from those notes I steal from. Now I can just keep checking that one task note as I work. I’ll also add notes about the tasks as I do them if there are things I want to reference later since my notebooks are fully searchable.

If you want to win the free premium upgrade for Evernote, don’t forget to leave a comment on the first post, by the way. We need at least 10 people to comment and it has to be done before midnight on Friday 7/23.

Upcoming Posts in the Getting Organized Series, subscribe to my feed to receive the next posts as they publish.

451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks – I talked about the main reason I came to a tool like Evernote is to replace my horrible notebooks that I can’t read or search. I’ll go into a little more details here, talk about some apps I’ve found useful alongside it and then I’ll talk about a few features I wish existed and some concerns about backing up notes, etc.

As Always – I look forward to hearing from you about what I’m missing or what makes sense (more of the former though, I like learning new ways)

[This is part two in a series of posts about "Getting Organized" using the Evernote toolset.]

Getting Organized Series Outline

• Introduction and License Giveaway
• A Task’s Life
• The Death of a Task, Man
• 451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks

The Life of A Task

The system I am using has a few stages. The stages all happen quickly as they are easy to manage. Let’s go through the lifecycle of a task in the hybrid system I’ve created for myself in my Evernote account.

• Conception – I created an “inbox” notebook (think of a notebook as a folder for lack of a better term) in Evernote and set it as my default.
  

  A notebook for each Mike

  If I am receiving a task,idea, project or something similar (all called “Task” from here) I create a note in this inbox and a task is conceived.

• Classification - This is usually done along side conceiving a task but can happen later if just creating a quick note on the fly.  Here, I  organize my notes into  a small set of categories I created based on the question “Which Mike?” This classification makes sense to me since the answer implies a different venue, train of thought or degree of focus.
  • Employee – All notes having to do with work are tagged by the employer name.
  • At Home Mike -  Husband, Father, Fix it man, chicken farmer & vegetable gardener. These notes get tagged “home”.
  • Consultant – I consult a little on the side. These tasks get tagged “StraightPath”.
  • Blogger – Blog ideas go to the “Blog Fodder” tag.
  • PASS Volunteer/User Group Leader – The combination take enough time that it deserved a tag, “PASS/UserGroup”
  • Allow myself to introduce Myself - My faith, health, goals, lifetime learning, etc. I tag these, “Sharpen The Saw” (From a Franklin Covey Time Management Course)

• Prioritization – Now I have a full inbox categorized to one of my multiple personalities. I need to prioritize the tasks and empty that inbox. Both happen here. Each tag mentioned at classification has a notebook. When I assign priority, I move the task to the proper notebook or just do it it is quicker or a missed task overdue. I don’t prioritize constantly. I always add tasks but I try to do this stage 3-4 times a day. This way I spend more time completing tasks and less time
  

  Numbered for easy selecting, my priorities

  assigning them. The priorities:

  • Due Today – This is a task that really has to be done today. If I can just push it off to tomorrow, it shouldn’t have been here (Under normal conditions, obviously production issues happen that take time).  If it is the end of the day, I may assign a task here “ahead of time” for the next day.
  • Due Soon – I know what soon means to me so I know what I am trying to convey here. If there were no tasks on me due today, these should be done. If it is Monday, they should be done by Weds or Thurs for work related tasks at the latest.
  • Due Someday/Later – I am sure GTD and Time Management gurus are ripping off their shirts and putting on sackcloth and ash now, “Someday! What is that!?!” To me, this is a nice to have, really should do that I intend on whittling off. If it doesn’t get done the world won’t be as good as it could have been but it won’t implode (unless it was to “recheck Large Hadron Collider and verify no black hole created”). I used to use the “Later” type task priority as a pre-trash-trash bin. I will try to kill that.
  • Reference – I know, not a “priority”. If I am in a meeting I may have a “Due Today” task with “Questions for Storage Meeting” as the start of the meeting note. As I get my answers and the meeting is wrapping up, I delete the Due Today priority and replace it with “reference”. Still searchable, not stressing me out as a “to do”.
  • Waiting On - It may be an important task (and if it is, it will be in the “Due Today” or “Due Soon” category at the same time as this one) but this reminds me that I am waiting on someone else. Comes in handy when reviewing open tasks.
  • What Note? Evernote has a trash barrel. If I don’t need a done task or idea for reference, I’ll delete it. The grocery list my wife gave me today is a great example.

The Blog Fodder Notebook, open to this series' idea note

• Separate Notebooks – Each of my “Which Mike” categories has a notebook. This is typically where a note will go once I’ve assigned a priority. It clears the inbox and allows me to search within a folder as a limiter. I also have a  couple other folders like Contacts (for paperless business cards, more in a later post) or Reference folders for reference items (blog posts clipped from web, kb articles, white papers, diagrams, etc.)

• Complete – Once a task has been completed I remove the priority tag and leave it in the proper “Which Mike?” notebook. I have an archive category and folder in case I want to start archiving by quarter, month or year in the future. For now it works.

That’s It?

Really, yeah. This is the easy part. The tough part is discipline. This isn’t some revolutionary system. It really has pieces that the “GTD people” seem to follow and some aspects of a time management program. It also contains good old fashioned task management 101 principles. I like it and it works for me, though. Why? I can think of a few reasons -

• One System - No notebook sprawl. No Post-It’s on monitors.
• Crisp and Clean – My desk doesn’t is clean(former colleagues know what I mean and you can share with the readers about my paperwork mountains)
• Better Steward – No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, it makes sense to be a better steward of our environment. It’s also nice to be a better steward of company resources – saving some paper helps a little.
• I KEEP USING IT! – This is the easiest system I have used so far because I like it and I keep up with it. Maybe that is because I have it with me everywhere and on all these fun to use devices. Maybe it is because I created my own notebook, categories, tags and I control the flow.

If you want to win the free premium upgrade for Evernote, don’t forget to leave a comment on the first post, by the way. We need at least 10 people to comment and it has to be done before midnight on Friday 7/23.

Upcoming Posts in the Getting Organized Series, subscribe to my feed to receive the next posts as they publish.

The Death of a Task, Man – I’ll discuss some of the soft skills I am employing or hope to employ in my quest to kill tasks. I’ll also talk about how I do “task checks” and search for tasks and a few more technical helps but those will be from the soft skill perspective.

451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks – I talked about the main reason I came to a tool like Evernote is to replace my horrible notebooks that I can’t read or search. I’ll go into a little more details here, talk about some apps I’ve found useful alongside it and then I’ll talk about a few features I wish existed.

I’d love to hear your approach! If you want to share your approach or what bugs you see in my current approach, I’d love to hear about it. You can comment here on this post or, if you want to be entered into the license giveaway, you can leave your comment on the first post. Now, it’s off to check off a few tasks.

[This is the first in a 4 part series of posts about "Getting Organized" , on track and my use of Evernote.]

Getting Organized Series Outline

• Introduction and License Giveaway
• A Task’s Life
• The Death of a Task, Man
• 451 Degrees – Good For Notebooks

Do you struggle with organization? Note taking? Note Finding? I do and I could have found the fix for me. Leave a comment for the contest at the bottom and I’ll give you a one year premium account to the tool I’m using. Details are at the bottom.

Maybe this blog post is too early. “They” say it takes 3 months of doing something for it to become a habit. Well, I am writing after experiencing something new that is still new to me and being tweaked but it is really helping.

A mockup of a real notebook (even with the doodle)

The Problem Statement

“They” also say a picture is worth 1,000 words. In this case the picture probably represents hundreds of thousands of written words. The picture to the right is an example of what one of my (many) notebooks would look like. Chicken scratch writing, doodles from being on long calls and lost Action Items.

The Problem Statement here could be “I am wasting time writing notes I can’t find or use later, what should I do?”

I normally have a few notebooks in circulation at a time. Some for personal notes, some for blog ideas, some for client work. I have a general idea of where something is but sometimes I start a new one if it isn’t handy. I can’t understand the context sometimes. Maybe that was alright because my note taking used to be more just about writing it once to get it into memory and that worked most of the time. I still did a lot of mental gymnastics trying to recall what a note meant. I also lacked the discipline to go back through all the “Action Item” tags to bring them onto a list. I’ve used many systems (Outlook Tasks, Franklin Covey, Typed To Do Lists, etc.)

Another problem statement? I’m getting sick and tired of paper. I am finding myself hating paper’s clutter a little more each year. (In case my wife is reading – only a little more, that’s why I still have so much but I am getting to where you are, quickly)

Other problems: The notebooks aren’t searchable and aren’t always there; the kids like to cut and draw when they find paper; I look like a fool fumbling through the notebooks; Can you read my writing? I can’t always either; It’s a pain to link thoughts and track them over time… I could keep going.

The inspiration to get organized

An Answer?

No, it isn’t the Mac but the picture shows the simplicity of the solution. It doesn’t require a notebook at all. At work I show up with my Mac Book and phone. At a client I bring the home windows laptop (That over sized, noisy, ugly laptop ) and phone. I always have the windows mobile phone (does that make up for the mac?). If I ever don’t have a device, I probably can get to the internet somehow.

All of these tools allow me to use a new tool in my arsenal: Evernote. They describe their product:

Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer, phone or device you use. For free.

That’s it. That’s what it does. So far I have used the tool to manage notes, whiteboard images, business cards and it has been enjoyable, usable and makes me want to keep using it. Some tasks I’ve performed:

• Save notes from meetings
• Create Action Items with priority and category (Where are they from? Which “Mike” has to worry about them?)
• Track my spending and eating (why not, I need to be better at both)
• Remember ideas for blog posts (like this series you are reading)
• Do things at home that I normally would have “yes’d” and forgotten about (until gently reminded)
• Started to store links and captures from websites of useful information about a topic of interest
• Search for previous notes and quickly find them
• Upload images (White Boards, Business Cards) and search them with decent  (for OCR) results
• Solve world peace and middle east hunger (Were you paying attention?)

How Have I Done This?

With some tags, folders and typing in Evernote. I keep saying that word, I’m not getting paid to talk about their tool, I just really like it so far. I’ve used the features available in the Mac Client (which is lacking a few things, in my opinion… We’ll get to that in part 2 or 3) during the day. I’ve even downloaded and used the features on the phone, like taking an audio note when I was in need of duct tape and a knife in my truck (it’s not what you think.. I didn’t need a cooler). Evernote is definitely not a task management tool by default and I started using it for searchable notes in “one” place that I won’t clutter my house with. Using the note capabilities, It is working out alright for task management.

I’ll go into more details in the next post where I give you the lowdown on the techniques I am using and some more details.  The plan I have for the next posts:

Part 2 – My Evernote Technique - How I use the product, the tags/folders I use and method. Works for me, maybe can help you design your own. Also how I plan on using it to both make my life more search-able and reduce the paper clutter.

Part 3 – Evernote Wish List – Evernote just unveiled a neat “trunk” of apps and there are a few apps I’d still like to see created with a few features I’d love to see in the Mac client. So a small wishlist.

A Contest

Evernote is free and the free features are probably fine for most casual uses, even serious uses in the free version. With a premium account you can get rid of the advertisements, get some neat features (ability to search PDFs, quicker OCR on the Mac client, import more file types, import more data to name a handful) and feel good about supporting a well done piece of software.

So… I want you to have a free upgrade to premium. I will select a name (based on some method I choose, inspire me with your story, I guess) if two conditions have happened: the comment is made before midnight EST on Friday, 7/23 and I have at least 10 comments by that time. Just tell me about your current system in the comments. How do you keep track of this all? How could a tool like Evernote help you? What is your biggest frustration with time and task management? Would you hire someone who essentially starts out a blog post with “I need to be better at time management, note taking and organization?”

Subscribe to this blog’s feed to see the next posts and the contest winner when announced.

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Robert Davis (@SQLSoldier on twitter) and he asked us about learning and teaching. More on the Captain Quote at the bottom.

How Do you Learn? How Do you Teach? YES

Robert asked those two questions (along with some others) to help inspire ideas for the topic. If you combine the question as one, I think yes is the perfect answer. There is a, sort of, continuum of education. First you learn. Then you do. Then you teach. And each one of those steps is still a learning exercise. I think if you ask anyone at any level who blogs about SQL Server or presents about SQL Server (yes, even a Paul, Kimberly or Kalen) you’ll find that they are constantly learning a ton through teaching.

Get Your Teach On

I mean it. After this run on sentence, stop reading for a few moments and really think about what you know – wherever your current skill set is – contemplate the knowledge you have and what you’ve learned in however long your career has been……. Ok, back? Great. So perhaps you just had a Janice Lee moment and realized you’ve been further than you thought you have. Maybe you haven’t but either way, you know something about SQL Server (or whatever skillset you are involved in, this is a SQL blog post primarily, work with me here!). Can you think of anyone who maybe doesn’t know it?  Well there you go. Get your teach on. Find a medium (Blogging – I wrote a series with an interview with Brent Ozar and tips for starting a blog -, speaking, answering forum questions with an eye to help teach or just instructing someone on your team) and prepare to teach.

How Is That Learning?

If you are like most people, you are going to want to know angles about whatever lesson it is you are preparing that you aren’t familiar with. You are going to want to be prepared for some  questions (you can’t prepare for them all but if you answer honestly with an “I’m not sure, let me get back to you” you just gave yourself a learning homework assignment) and you will soon know more about your topic. Then, when you are writing out that blog post or giving that presentation you’ll be further cementing your knowledge. You’ll be showing other people how to do it, you’ll see the questions they come up with and think about the topic in ways you haven’t before.

If I ever go on a cruise – I want this captain.

Teaching not only helps you learn but it is a leadership trait. It means you are swallowing pride and desiring to bring others up to your level. You can look at that in two ways -

1. If I share the knowledge and bring them up to speed, then I won’t be the know it all in that area. They’ll get to take some of the glory and do parts of my job, oh no!
2. Hey, cool. This person wants to learn about the role. I can mentor them and develop their technical skills while developing my mentoring skills. We’ll grow better as a team and I won’t have to worry when I’m on vacation, cool!

Raise your hands if you’ve ever had an inkling of position number 1 – I won’t look. Alright, I didn’t look but if you didn’t raise your hand you are either lying or you started out better than I did Once I started growing a bit in my early career my first inkling was to take road number 1. It was working with an HR person as part of an interview team that the scales were mostly removed. She talked about a tendency for folks to not go after A players because of pride, a fear of being shown up, etc. It was a good talk and her point was – Surround yourself with A players and you will always be learning, working well as a team and growing. If you are striving to grow, “getting it” and improving there will always be people further ahead of you and behind you. So what. Worry about you and hire the A player. The same goes with teaching someone else to get to where you are.

I blogged about the great learning experience I got from Andy Kelly, an early manager. I truly believe that if it weren’t for his desire to learn through teaching, I wouldn’t have the passion for SQL Server that I have today. Andy learned through teaching me and he was able to help me grow in the process. I never threatened his standing at the company. Instead, they recognized what a great leader and mentor he was. Traits that made him valuable to the company.

Back to the captain and the quote -

Being a geek, I enjoy gadgets and I stumbled across a link to wired magazine with some neat cockpit displays while deciding on a blog topic. The linked image caught my eye. What I really liked, though, was the quote from the skipper. Check it out yourself – he is talking about where the “steering” joysticks are. They aren’t on his seat but on the seats of other officers. His thoughts on this?

The port and starboard command chairs have built-in joysticks for controlling the ship,” Wright says. But those are typically operated by other officers. “Captains should be mentoring and teaching.”

It’s worth repeating – Captains should be mentoring and teaching. That’s good stuff.

In fact, Captain Wright could probably write a book about leadership and call it, “Captains Should Be Mentoring and Teaching.”. He isn’t worried about a mutiny if those junior officers grow. He knows there are a lot of ships in the sea (some may even hold celebrities like Brent Ozar or Tim Ford) and they need excellent Captains. He knows that comes through experience and training.

So  – What are you going to do?

Are you going to start teaching more? Great. Do you currently blog? I’d love to read your thoughts on your blog, pretty easy to start doing it. All you have to do to teach is remember what you know, find opportunities to bring someone up to that point and improve your own knowledge in the periphery of the topic while teaching. That’s it. You can’t go wrong because you and your student are growing, even if you stink at it.

(ps. Apparently Dead Poet’s society was brought out by my memory banks from typing captain so many times. I hadn’t read Walt Whitman’s poem before the movie and I am happy that I was able to type the entire post, the few “Captains” and all without saying “O Captain my Captain!” But I felt daring, so I had to work it in here someplace. I also changed the title of this blog post because I really like Captain Wright’s simple quote.

Captains should be mentoring and teaching…

Some Related Posts

• Planning To Fail (part 2) –> Helping others learn from their mistakes is a way to teach.
• Made to Stick –> A great book I read that gives some usable tips for making your lessons last.
• Everyone Grows or Everyone Fails –> My contribution to the professional development week at SQL University, reminder to share knowledge (AKA – Teach)
• One Man’s Trash… –> I learned a lesson at the dump. It helps to have the right attitude when trying to teach something lasting.

Let me share a little secret with you – You are going to fail. You’ll have multiple failures in diverse areas in life. It’s what you do with them that predicts if you’ll be an overall success.

In the first post of this two part series, we talked about including failure in our plans and embracing failure as an important individual learning tool. Today we’ll talk about failure as a teaching and corporate learning tool.

Angle #3 – Everybody Fails! (Plan to help others)

Can you think about the last time you made a mistake? I think if you are honest you won’t have to think back too far, I didn’t anyway. Remember when you were learning something? Remember when you were new at the job and you made that mistake. What about the time you got that response when you made an honest and simple mistake? Didn’t feel great, did it?

I’ll give my standard disclaimer here, I’m preaching to myself with this angle (well really all angles but this one especially)… We all make mistakes. If I had to take a stitch of cube fabric down for every mistake I’ve made in life, I’d have a real open concept cubicle.

Keep that in mind when dealing with other people’s mistakes. I think it is perfectly acceptable to expect people to own their mistakes and be honest and up front about them. As long as they are doing that and there wasn’t malicious intent or careless behavior involved why box someone’s ears? The sting of knowing you screwed up is often a powerful motivator and teacher all by itself. Come to that persons side, offer them some help, tell them a story about how you brought down the production cluster once. Sure there may be a teachable moment in there but teaching doesn’t always have to look like tearing into someone skull and popping their eyeballs out… Teach but don’t lecture. Help but don’t strut.

Angle #4 – Cleanup, Aisle 4 (Plan to not be doomed to repeat failures)

We either learn from our mistakes because we embraced our failure like we discussed in Angle #3 and change our course or we make the same failure again and again. I can’t speak for you, but I vote for the former.

As we discussed in part 1, we can learn from our own mistakes. That is a great tool for personal learning but how does your team or company do? I’ve worked at companies that do a great job at this and I’ve worked at companies that don’t.

I’ll give the negative example first… So a mistake happened, production downtime and money spent/lost because of a failure. Meetings are convened to discuss the failure but they start something like this – “Yesterday we had a failure in our system, it wasn’t my fault but I think it was the delivery team’s fault.” Ahhh the blame game, played in countless board rooms and e-mail trails across the world. In fact even as you read this post, somewhere some “team” is playing a round. Blame is assigned, the issue and causative factors are lost in the noise and someday, someway that issue is going to pop up again. Don’t do that. Don’t fall victim to that.

We already said it – We are going to fail, we all make mistakes. So how does an organization deal with that mistake’s aftermath? You may groan when you hear the terms “lessons learned meeting” or “root cause analysis” but those are really great tools. Don’t you want to know why the failure happened and how to prevent it? Put the egos, pointer fingers and pride aside and get together and figure out what happened. Ask why a few times like Thomas LaRock describes in his post on Root Cause Analysis. Thoroughly research and understand the issues before moving on from a serious production outage. Maybe you didn’t follow the first angle and you didn’t account for that failure scenario?

Wrap It Up, Walsh

We all mess up. Either understand, plan, prepare and learn from the times that you do and remember that when others do and end up succeeding in the end or let your failures be your (or your project’s, team’s, or even your company’s) failure. I really think it is that simple.  Before I leave you to go out and better practice what I preach, I’ll leave you with..

A Few Quotes

• “Failure is success if we learn from it.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
  
• “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” – C.S. Lewis
  
• “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” Tom Krause
  
• “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” – Sven Goran Eriksson
  
• “Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.” – Frederick Smith

Don’t forget to check out the first part of this two part series. Looking forward to reading your thoughts in the comments below.

Let me share a little secret with you – You are going to fail. You’ll have multiple failures in diverse areas in life. It’s what you do with them that predicts if you’ll be an overall success.

If you are not planning for failure, you aren’t planning for success. My point may sound like a Yogiism but I mean it. Let’s dissect it a little bit. 

This post is a two part series. Today we’ll introduce the post and talk about the first two angles. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll post the follow up with the final two angles and some quotes that serve as good reminders.  Subscribe to my feed to be notified when that posts.

Inspiration

I was leaving the office yesterday for lunch and I wish I had followed Jon DiPietro‘s great blogger advice and brought my camera phone. One of the landscapers working across the street had himself stuck on a precarious ledge on his lawnmower. His partner came to the rescue as I was getting ready to head over and offer a push. When the partner got there on his own tractor he pulled out a rope from his cart of tools. He handed the rope off and pulled him up with ease. Now maybe that was actually the plan all along and it wasn’t really a potential #fail in action but at the time, I thought it was and remarked in my head, “they were ready for that.”

I know I’ve blogged a bit about this before when first starting out in posts talking about using checklists, recipes and algorithms; embracing empirical evidence; or even harnessing paranoia as a DBA but I want to zero in on failure from four angles here.

Angle #1 – Include Failing In Your Planning

An obvious example - Had they planned for failure on the Titanic would more have survived?

It doesn’t matter what you are doing. Think about the failure scenarios for that task or project. Talk about them with the team; write them out on a project plan even.  The amount of time, energy and paper you spend on this should change based on the complexity and scope of the project but even just a quick run down in your head of a few, “what if” scenarios will really help.

If you include failure in your plans you have three potential outcomes that I can see, can anyone see any others?

• You Wasted Some Time – No good came of it. Those scenarios didn’t happen. You wasted the time thinking about and discussing the potential failures. (or did you?)
• You Averted Failure – Through talking out potential failure points and poking theoretical holes in your approach, you actually realized a mistake and changed the plans.
• You Knew What To Do When You Failed – Because you had discussed some failure paths ahead of time when presented with one that mirrored or was similar to a discussed fail path you already knew how to handle it. Even if presented with a very different failure path, you still knew what you would do in the event of a failure.

As I survey those outcomes, the benefit of the second two far outweigh the cost of the first. It wasn’t that much time wasted and even if we didn’t need the plan who is to say a future project won’t benefit from that discussion?

Angle #2 – Embrace Your Failures (Plan to learn from failure)

On the same day as the lawnmower “rescue mission”, I was listening to a radio show and heard the host talking about a time he tried starting a business -he failed. He received a call from an executive recruiter shortly after the failure. Someone wanted him to be CEO of a business in a very similar space. He was confused and asked the recruiter, “doesn’t the company know I just failed doing this same business?” I am paraphrasing the answer but believe it’s worth bolding, “That is why they want to hire you. They know you have the maturity from the failure and know you have that experience.” He decided to not go with the job for various reasons but that sounds like a really smart team looking to hire the position. They saw the wisdom gained through failure.

I’ll always remember when I was thrown into the pit with clustering for the first time. It was a new company, they liked my SQL Server DBA experience and felt I would be able to pick up clustering working with a consultant and be able to introduce the concept to their very young but quickly growing SQL Server environment. The consultant wasn’t actually a clustering expert so we muddled through together. I read the best practices, documentation, etc. but I got most of my knowledge about clustering where the rubber meets the road. Those first few months were interesting. I learned a lot of things the hard way (pay closer attention to the dialog boxes, don’t remove a dependent resource before clearing the dependency, etc) I had brought the production cluster down a couple times while fumbling. I don’t suggest this approach and wouldn’t normally take it but the timing left us little choice. I had a couple red faced moments but you know what? I learned a ton. I could have got discouraged and said forget this, I could have let the failures distract me but I documented where I messed up and gained knowledge (both of clustering and dealing with failures) that helped me on my journey to where I am today.

I want to repeat the secret from my introduction – You are going to fail. You’ll have multiple failures in diverse areas in life. It’s what you do with them that predicts if you’ll be an overall success. If you embrace the failure, learn from it and move on, then was it really a fail? If you flounder and flop after each failure and get gun shy then it most definitely was.

What Do You Think?

How do you plan for failure? Do you think I’m being too paranoid? Have a story of a time you learned through mistakes/failures? Share your thoughts below in the comments, I am sure others would love to see how not alone they are.

Part Two

Check out the follow up post, it continues the theme with a couple more angles:

• Angle #3 – Everybody Fails!
• Angle #4 – Cleanup, Aisle 4

Having trouble getting your ideas accepted? I read a book that can help you. You can read the review or just go out and get the book, I recommend it. “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” There is a link ‘below the fold.’

Yes, some readers got what they needed from the tweet about this post or the line above. Following one of the examples in the book, I made sure to not bury the lead. The authors at one point paint a picture related to journalism. They talk about how the good journalists give you everything you need right up front in the “lead”. If you want to read more, you can and add flesh but you don’t have to if you are busy. Sure, they may not have as many people reading to the end but everyone who reads to the end of the lead has the main point, great illustration.

Made To Stick – A Review

How did I find the book?

A friend of mine, Jon DiPietro who blogs at Domesticating IT, suggested I read this book. He runs a software business, is active as a leader in industry groups and spends a lot of time helping folks with social networking/media needs. He suggested it to help with presentations or blog content and as a fun read.

Who is the audience?

A wide audience can benefit from reading this book. A few examples could be instructors wanting to reach students; marketers wanting to entice, not annoy; presenters hoping to trigger an action; pastors wanting to leave a flock with the key thought; or non-profits wanting to convert interest into volunteers or donations. Those audiences share some goals:

• They need to reach people.
• (with the right message)
• They need to convey a main point. (something I’ve blogged about prior to finishing this book)
• They don’t want to annoy their audience away from the action item.
• They want something good to come from their idea.

This is not a, “what will it take you to get into this car?!” kind of book. It borrows from urban legends, cognitive science, and teaching experience to show genuine people how to better accomplish the goals within their ideas.

What did I like best?

Stories

Each major point had real world stories of the principle in action; great examples of the concept in action in varied settings. For example, did you know how the Dr. who discovered that Ulcers were caused by H. Pylori bacteria finally got people to believe him? You will and it is fascinating (and disgusting!)

Case Studies

There were case studies asking you to compare messages for different goals. By looking at these in each chapter you clearly see the major theme of that chapter in the real world. You can actually see that you are learning as the lesson echoes in your head while you investigate the task.

Mnemonic

I’m a sucker for a good mnemonic, one that is simple, relevant, and memorable enough to use later. That friend Jon who suggested this book created a great example when he suggested internet marketers get bare - BARE (Be Authentic, Relentless and Everywhere.) In the book the Authors touch on their mnemonic in every chapter (in fact the chapter layout is arranged in this order). The device follows its starting letter with its simplicity – SUCCESs or Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories)

The Bad

This is a book that I have a hard time finding the bad in. Perhaps the fact that isn’t geared towards technical presenters/bloggers could be a turn off to some, though I believe the points are just as applicable. I suppose the only other complaint I can find is that I should re-read and better apply the lessons. Not the authors’ fault, they follow the SUCCESs pattern and hooked me, I just want to (need to?) go further with it.

Recommended

I suggest that anyone who succeeds or fails based on effective communication check out the book. Be it day to day communication trying to get a point out to your team or management or if you are trying to make sure people leave a technical presentation with some important concepts understood this book should help. You can get “Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” on Amazon for about $17 new at the time of this post’s writing. The authors (Chip and Dan Heath) also blog at HeathBrothers.Com

Update

I want to thank Jeremiah Peschka and Brent Ozar for some recent blog posts on writing. This post was written a couple months ago and scheduled. After re-reading some of the concepts in this book and the above linked posts from Jeremiah and Brent, a lot of words were trimmed from this post and the heading was trimmed. Thanks, gentlemen! Great timing also with their posts and the PASS call for speakers opening soon. This book will help me prepare my abstract and, if selected, sessions.

It’s spring and in addition to our usual vegetable garden and some existing fruit crops, we are putting in a row of 15 blueberry bushes. Well the past two nights I’ve been outside for 3-4 hours digging a trench (about 40′ long by 2.5′ wide and 1′ deep. right, I said feet.) by hand and then started to refill it with better dirt basically. Plenty of time for the mind to wander about a host of topics, including this post.  As I worked a few lessons that apply to the day job came to mind.  Good lessons no matter what you do but I’ll spin the SQL side, obviously… Since it is still Professional Development week at SQL University, I figured I’d post this week. Maybe you’ll take something useful from it, or maybe this is all for me. The previous Professional Development post for SQL University was on sharing knowledge.

Lessons (In No Particular Order)

My hand - apparently it's built for keyboards, not shovels...

1.) It Isn’t Weak To Use Help – I don’t really own a good pair of work gloves. My wife has some flowery gardening gloves. The first night of shoveling in bouldery/rocky hard-pan clay, I figured “real men don’t wear work gloves!” I seem to recall re-learning this lesson every so often working outside.

Books Online is a friend – The day job corollary in my mind is – use the help that is available. Most of the time it is a sign of strength, not weakness to use a help source. The end results can mean happier customers and a better process (or less pain in the palm of your hand). Tonight, I used the  new work gloves I bought at Wal-Mart. Wow. What a difference. I was even more effective.  Ever try and solve anything through trial and error only to realize that a trusted source (such as books online) had the answer the whole time? Well that’s how I felt… Use The Resources available to you.

2.) It Helps To Be In Shape – I only took a picture of my hand. No videos of me panting while working or clothing drenched from sweat. I was in much better shape after ActiveAugust last year but I got to the worst shape of my life the past 6 months, let stress get the best of me and sort of gave up on the working out and then the eating healthy… Well I realize the error of my ways and will be working on that…

Back to the day job application – Stay Current With Your Skills - Alright, so some of these analogies will be stretches but it made sense to me when I was out there working and thinking of the lessons. If I were in better shape (lets just say that these past two nights have been the best workout I’ve had in many months) I would have done more and felt better. Don’t be your own enemy – Practice your skills, read blogs, try things out, always be learning and preparing.

3.) Prepare When You Can (File under practice what you preach) – Last fall, I did a lot of prep work for the vegetable garden. We planted a bunch of garlic for summer harvest. That inspired the above linked post reminding folks to plan ahead… Oops. We knew we had the bare root blueberry plants coming but I was busy with work and “busy” slacking off instead of doing this ins small chunks. Do what you can ahead of time, “we’ll take care of it later” usually has a cost.

Where have you been all my life??

4.) Use The Right Tool(s) For The Job – I’ve always hated digging on my property. Hard pan clay, boulders just under the grass/loam layer. I’ve always just muttered my way through with a garden shovel. Well, not for this project. 3/4 of the way through my first night of trench duty I remembered my wife’s grandmother had a pick axe (well actually a pick mattock, I think) so I drove down and borrowed it. WOW! If I had one when we first moved in and used it ever since, I would probably have 30 hours of my time back from planting apple trees, making garden beds, planting lilacs and establishing a lawn. It made short work of the rocks, popped big boulders up with a simple swing and a push forward with the mattock providing a fulcrum getting the boulder ready for my greedy hands. I almost am willing to say it made it fun. For the day job? Use the right tool for the job! Maintenance plans have their place for a DBA who isn’t comfortable enough to create database maintenance jobs by scratch, even if you are comfortable. Some may laugh, I won’t. It works. Use a tool for source control, windows explorer (at least by itself with no source control tool add-ons) is not that tool. Use “Helper” Tools - Be it a database monitoring software program, a data comparison tool, a database diagramming tool, etc. there are tools out there that are designed to make life easier for you. I am actually contemplating buying a pick mattock and just leaving it in my cube as a work related tool. Not to actually use, just for intimidation for drive-by’s…

5.) Focus On Your Own Task – It was a bit boring out there and I’ll be honest, I wanted to be done. Anytime I looked forward to what was left or back to how little I’ve gone, it was a bit of a kick in the seat. When I zeroed in on the window of what I was doing (dig, dump, dig, dump) I got a lot further than I realized  I was getting. Instead of focusing on what I had left to do I was focused on my task.. Now in the day job it looks a bit different because while zeroing in visually on where I was working my mind was still wandering, I was doing a mindless task and I don’t do Zen. At work I actually mean focus on your task. If it is a deploy, then focus on the step of the deploy script and pay excruciating attention to that one detail. Sounds like common sense but if I don’t work at focus, I can miss a small piece of a puzzle. Do whatever you have to do to maintain that focus.

6.) Remember How Easy You Have It – While digging it occurred to me that this project is nothing compared to what other folks have dug by hand over time. Foundations, Wells, even canals – or am I thinking of the Panama Canal in the basement from Arsenic and Old Lace? anyway… So I spent some time marveling at the kind of things done by hand over time. Ever use an older version of SQL Server? I have recollections of pains in growing a file in SQL Server 6.5 and working an application that often had fun data integrity issues on SQL 6.5 (wasn’t SQL’s fault, if I recall correctly). Things get easier with the new tools and versions that come out. You could always have it worse.

7.) Quality Now Means Quality Later – Kind of goes with that link about practicing what you preach above but the more quality I put in here, the better chance the blueberries have. Since they are 3 year old plants the plants that bear fruit early should do so in just a couple months. So a little hard work now gives me some fresh, tasty, organic blueberries around June. Keep the end result in mind. Building a new SQL Instance? The more attention you pay to thinking about how you install SQL Server means less time supporting issues later. Creating a new database or developing some code? Think about the code review now, not at the code review. Fix things now while you can and you’ll have more time later.

There you have it. Some random thoughts from a garden project. Time to take some ibuprofen and hit bed I’ll set this to schedule on Friday morning sometime. Did I miss any lessons? Any tips for the blueberries? (Besides rent a backhoe, that is). Comments are always open, no registration required.

SQL University Survey

If you would like to participate, SQL University is running a survey to seek feedback on all sessions provided this semester. If you have a few moments please check out the survey. The results will help us blog more relevant content and improve SQLU next semester!

This week is SQL University’s “Professional Development” week. Andy Leonard is a pro when it comes to this topic (check out this post and the links on it to see what I mean) and I asked if I could sneak a post in along side his this week since it is a topic I tend to gravitate towards (primarily as a means of teaching myself lessons I need to learn). I was going to write about some hallmarks of a good DBA or any IT Professional (Things I’ve blogged about before like when talking about owning mistakes or a post recapping lessons I learned at the dump). A recent post by Jason Hall, however, gave me a different thought process -

Everyone Grows… Or Everyone Fails

A hyperbole? I don’t know but I think it holds true. Jason’s post talked about his experience at a conference working at a vendor booth. He had a lot of conversations with developers and many sounded the same, apparently. They wish their DBAs shared reports and info about the system with them. My first instinct was to write a comment and say “yeah.. right.. I’d like to find some developers like that!” poking fun and adding fuel to the stereotype of DBA-Developer, umm, relationships. It started my thought process, though. Do we do enough as DBAs to share? Do I? Sure, I teach some classes for performance minded development wherever I am working. Sure I’ll answer some questions but is that enough? Do you share enough? Does your company? Or do you subscribe to the notion that…

Knowledge Is A Weapon?

I’ve worked with folks who believe this. I’ve worked at organizations where that notion is deeply set. Do you know what I mean? Getting information is like pulling teeth, people keep you guessing. Perhaps they are afraid of being less important. Perhaps they are afraid of their team losing an edge. Whatever the reason the end result isn’t great for anyone involved. Share. We learned that in Kindergarten. Heck we learned it in preschool and our parents enforced that rule often, especially if we had siblings. It works today in the corporate world, it works on technology teams.

Some Ways A DBA Can Share?

There area a lot of areas we can share better but some thoughts (and before you get uncomfortable, my standard professional development disclaimer applies – I am talking to myself as much as I am to you)

• Teaching/Mentoring – I really enjoy this one. Setup some brown bag lunches and teach a topic. Take a presentation you’ve received and regurgitate it to the rest of the DBA team, to some Developers or to the system administrator team.
• Show Them The Reports! – Like Jason said in the blog post that inspired this one. What’s the harm in letting others see the state of things. Developers might see the impact (positive or negative) from a development decision. Architects can see the effects of a design decision. Your peers and management will see, gasp!, the state of the environments you manage. Sure… I know this might air some dirty laundry but are you doing the best job you can do? Are you working your tail off on proactive tasks when you aren’t interrupted by reactive ones? If you are barely keeping your head above water because of too much reactive work for one DBA perhaps a couple black marks could even work in your favor.
• Documentation – Yeah.. I don’t like doing it either but Documentation is to be embraced.  It lets you go on uninterrupted vacation, it lets other staff back you up or do rote tasks and it just makes life easier for all involved.
• Participate In Meetings – Meetings!?! I know. I hear you. You have to go to them anyway, so instead of just playing Dr. No (Actually, I sign on to corporate web meetings as “Dr. No” but that’s another story.) explain things, offer suggestions and let people know what is going on in your head (related to the topic at hand, please)
• Check Your Motives – I wish I could say that this advice could never have anything to do with me. I can say it usually doesn’t but I catch myself letting that evil pride get in the way sometimes. As I get “older”, I find it occurring less and less. In the past few years, I’ve started to embrace offers for help. It means I have one less thing to do. I’ve started to jump for joy when a colleague wants me to teach them how to do a part of the job that I used to think was “mine, all mine!” It means I can focus on something else that needs to get done. It means I might have a week that is close to 40 hours because of the help. Some Tips for checking the motives?
  • Help is Help - Remember that. Help isn’t someone showing you up. Help isn’t someone trying to steal your job or “be better” than you. In fact, what does that even mean? Why do we go to our jobs? Is it to be better than people? I go to provide for my family first and foremost (though I think I’d sadly still enjoy doing something with technology and SQL Server even if I didn’t have to… maybe not as many hours). That means I am there to do the best job I can do for my company. I am there to make sure we have a more successful day each day. That doesn’t mean I have a more successful day but that the company does. That means my team should do the best we can do. If someone wants to help me on that quest, I should jump at the chance – there are enough people to deal with that seem to not have that same goal in mind (alright, I’m half joking)
  • All Boats Rise Together – If a colleague does a better job, the team is doing a better job. Maybe the analogy sees failures in some sports, but I think a team of team oriented players looking to succeed as a group does better in the long run. If you are the A player in a subject your goal should be to bring the B/C/D players up to A level. it shouldn’t be to keep them down so you have some sort of an edge.  Like I said above, everyone grows, or everyone fails.
• Honey, Not Vinegar – Sure we will always see people who aren’t like minded. We will always deal with less than optimal (and that is being nice) code, time lines, architectures, hardware, storage subsystem, etc.  You can write off the people or teams who create these situations or you can help them out. The former will give you a chance to use some new “witty” sarcastic comment. The latter will help prevent problems in the future without alienating people. I’ll be honest here, I have found myself tempted to go with bitter approach at times. I’ve even given in and it did nothing good. Technical accomplishments were forgotten and the attitude was remembered. Projects weren’t improved and issues were resolved angrily, if at all.

No Auditing

SQL University students are tough and determined. Someday there may be a Microsoft Certified Masters student who got their start reading posts here. Real students don’t audit. So… There is a homework assignment. It’s simple though: Try it. Publish a report from a monitoring tool or the SSMS reports. Show someone how to look at one of the tools you like to use to track your environment. Approach a code review as a time to partner with development in the same goal – meeting the requirements – exceeding them, even. Be sickly positive even when faced with some pretty frustrating situations and share knowledge, work with the goal of making the environment better. I’ll be doing the homework assignment myself and I’ll report back here in a week or two with the results. I just ask you to try it for a week and let us know in the comments what you ended up sharing. Enjoy the rest of the semester at SQL University and I’ll see you in a couple weeks when I am your official instructor during the week discussing SQL Server tools (instead of lecturing during Andy Leonard‘s class )

Other Professional Development Posts

Some other topics in the “Professional Development” vein.

• Checklists, Recipes and Algorithms – DBAs can learn a lot from Pilots, Chefs and Doctors. I blog about it here.
• One Man’s Trash – While at the dump, I picked up an important lesson about attitude.
• Bill Clinton Wasn’t Impeached For… – Own your mistakes, it is often the best solution in the long run.
• Day Job Lessons From The Garden – Sometimes some manual labor will give a few good reminders.

Update

I’ve done some of my homework. I took some reports from the monitoring tool I use and published them. I have a time setup to training folks on the reports and publish the URLs out. I’ve also been working on the security policy which allows developer support teams the ability to look at server information (view server state) and query (select only) from certain log tables. Giving them the information to help me. How about you?

Yes, he was impeached, by the house and acquitted by the Senate. Not the point of my post today, forget the politics. He wasn’t impeached for all of that business with Monica Lewinski. Was it unethical? Yes. Was it immoral? Well to me it is. Was that activity an impeachable offense? No. Why was he in legal trouble then? Simple: he lied. He, according to the conviction in the House, perjured himself about his affair while under oath. You may also remember his infamous press conference where he did the same thing to the public.

What’s Your Point? This is a SQL Server Blog…

Well my point is simple, often the cover-up or lie is worse (or has worse effects at least) than the act being lied about.

That’s where it relates to my chosen career field. That is where we, as DBAs, Sysadmins, Developers, etc., have to make sure we pay attention to the many lessons we see in public oopses.

Ever Have This Feeling?

One time, I was doing some work on a critical production cluster. I was adding drives and modifying an existing drive. Took the drive offline (shh if you already know how this ends). Took the disk offline… And then… I had that feeling. Please tell me you know the feeling also – my face felt like it was on fire. My fight or flight system was in overdrive as I had an adrenaline dump. Hands got a bit jittery, awareness increased while at the same time a narrow focus started. My stomach? Oh man. That horrible feeling of your stomach being twisted and turned upside down like an engine that just won’t turn over. Yup… I realized what I did when I saw the SQL cluster begin a dance of fail-overs. You bonehead! That drive was a dependency of the SQL Server group.

Yup. I brought the production cluster to a standstill for about 10 minutes while I hustled to repair the damage done. So while fixing that issue I had two choices of how I would proceed:

1. Listen to the voice in my head that says (somehow italics look more sneaky), “quickly fix it, figure out how to cover the tracks and draft an e-mail that starts with something like, ‘a mysterious issue…’ “
2. Listen to the voice in my head that says, “quickly fix it, ping someone in charge and give them a heads up and let them know what you did. Prepare to write a note explaining the event.”

I chose Option 2. I’m not saying I’m better than you if you went with Option 1. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m just saying that Option 1 doesn’t work. Early on in my career I may have gone with something between the two options. Even that doesn’t work because it leaves untied ends. The best manager I ever worked for (I blogged about him when I answered the SQL Quiz on Leadership) was really big on this. His philosophy on this more or less was, “Own it”. If you don’t own it on his team you have a problem, probably lost some respect and trust. If you do own it and the mistake or issue wasn’t something really horrible, you’ll end up alright in the long run.

How Do You “Own It”?

It’s simple. You admit you messed up, fix the issue or enlist help in fixing the issue, make a plan to prevent this from happening in the future and move on. You’ll be fine. We are all human, we all mess up and most of us still have our jobs. Heck, even Bill Clinton after his not owning it commands a lot of money to speak.

A Pattern

Now one of my flaws that I am still working on after 10 years in the field is keeping e-mails short and to the point. So take this advice with that caveat in mind. A good quick template of an e-mail I could have sent in that issue above:

Earlier today the cluster service became unavailable while I was doing maintenance on it. This e-mail outlines what happened.

Summary

I was tasked with removing a disk that was no longer being used. As this disk was removed, I realized (too late) that it was a dependency on the SQL Server group in the cluster. This means that the SQL Server failed back and forth between the nodes until it rested in a failed state. I was able to resolve this by breaking the dependency on the unused disk and bring the cluster back online.

How Was This Missed?

I should have checked the dependencies before touching the disk. I did not use a checklist to check for this and I missed this important detail.

What will be done to prevent it?

I have created a document for working with cluster resources like disks. This document links back to Microsoft checklists and includes a warning about resource dependencies with a process to check this. I have also sent a note to the server teams and DBA teams outlining what happened.

That isn’t exactly what I would write but the bolded points are the “pattern”. Describe what happened, why it happened and how it won’t happen again… And then move on. Deal with the repercussions and feel confident knowing that you were honest and up front and you mitigated your own issue. And remember…

You Learned a Good Lesson

So maybe this isn’t one to include in the e-mail or in a mea culpa discussion with your manager (though you should have that mea culpa discussion). Keep this tip for yourself – whatever you did wrong… whatever caused that stomach roller coaster just taught you a lesson you won’t soon forget. Like I said, unless you really, totally ruined the day for your company, you’ll still have a job. You’ll still get respect from your colleagues because you quickly came clean and even talked about how to prevent it. You learned something, though. So eventually you may even have a net positive out of the issue. Just remember to learn from that lesson and don’t let pride get in the way.

Bring Your Own Negative Example

So, I didn’t talk about some negative examples. I can instantly think of the times where I have been involved with projects and teams that had people who listened to voice number 1. I won’t. I don’t need to. You can think of them already, right? How did you feel as the coworker (or victim) of the person who reached for the broom and the carpet corner? Don’t be that person…

Share your story below in the comments. I want to hear about how you cope with a mistake you make on the job. I want to hear about a counter example that you’ve bumped into and how it made you feel.

I am sitting in the terminal at Charlotte’s airport waiting for my flight back, it’s a bit delayed so I have time to reflect on a great SQL Saturday. This was my second SQLSaturday and it was a fantastic event. Boston was also great, as I blogged about but I was here a bit longer and had more time to interact with a lot of great speakers and attendees. I also had a great time hanging out wit the folks at SQL Sentry for their first Product Advisory Council meeting.

I am excited to be heading home to my family but it is actually a bit sad leaving some of the great people I got to hang out with. Once again, there were some great speakers (It is intimidating to be speaking at an event with the names who spoke today).

I’m going to take a walk through my weekend with a few lenses. If you are interested, come along for the journey…

Product Advisory Council Meeting

Wow. A great time. I felt a little odd being there with crowd of gurus and MVPs that they had assembled but I wasn’t lost in the conversations. I’ll blog about this a bit more in a separate non-syndicated post since it is related to a product. Suffice it to say, I learned a lot and was able to provide (hopefully meaningful) input. I had a great time hanging out with the team and hitting the speaker party on Friday. What a great time put on by the platinum sponsor of this SQL Saturday – SQL Sentry. Great food and some awesome conversations with some familiar faces from PASS and the blogosphere.

SQL Saturday Presenter

I am balding faster than I realized...

So last month was my first time speaking at a community event and I was a lot more nervous and a bit more rigid then than I was today. I had a really fun time presenting both sessions today. A bit more fun in the first talk (more on that in a second) but the audience was great, the atmosphere was relaxed, I had laughs where I was hoping to, had some good interaction back from all y’alls in the audience.

I know what I need to improve on and am hoping to get some feedback to know what I don’t know I need to improve on but I really want to speak some more, it is a great next step in the learning continuum (I learned preparing, learned through the questions during and after the talks,etc)

First Talk – “As a DBA, Where Do I start?”

If I had to rate myself, I’d say this was the better of the two. I was in a 20 capacity room and the chairs filled up with some folks standing around in the back and sitting on the floor/tables. I liked the smaller room, the fuller feeling room and being closer to the audience made it flow better, I think.

The questions from this talk told me that I was heading in the right direction. I think I might tweak it to include some more demos and perhaps better show a priority of steps. I want to keep doing this chat, there are a lot of accidental DBAs out there.

I need to work on my slide design. I like the minimalist approach and the images I use in this deck to provide some levity (the waterboarding of vendors seemed to be a universally well accepted practice down here) but I want to link back to more points (Like Buck Woody’s checklist for DBAs) and maybe spend some more time on practical aspects, perhaps as a follow on to that conversation. Maybe a screen cast to make.

Second Talk – “You Can Tune Your Own SQL Code”

I saw a fair number of familiar faces in this talk from my first talk. That was nice, made me feel that much better about the first talk and inspire some confidence. That and all the sweet tea cursing through my system (I discovered and fell in love with the stuff down here… Did I mention I don’t get out of New England a whole lot?) made me definitely energetic for this talk. This talk was really crowded, I was a bit late getting over there because of the previous session and I had to fight a crowd to get in. It was a 20 person room but the tables and aisles were well filled. Hoping folks found what they were expecting.

It started out well. I feel like I had some good audience interaction and some good laughter (where I was alright hearing laughter, mind you) and some fun with the crowd. I need to rework and re-rehearse this presentation more, though. My timing of the slides to demos was off, I was too rushed in the demo. I also need to better tweak what I talk about, I only have 60 minutes and I can’t get into every single detail (like the side track on the whiteboard of B-Trees, those kind of discussions can happen later). I think the Phone Book trick worked to help illustrate SARGable queries and I’ll keep that. I will, however, re-time everything and make a better flow. All in all, I don’t think I outright bombed (please leave a comment if I did! It can be anonymous, My speaker rate account is completely anonymous if you prefer- Mike Walsh speaker rate). I had some questions afterwards, requests for cards, etc. but I didn’t feel as good about this one as the first talk. I want to give a better experience for the next time I deliver this talk.

SQL Saturday Attendee

I went to the following sessions:

Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA on twitter) – He gave a talk on an introduction to Blogging and Speaking. He asked me if I would help on the panel but it was all his presentation. It was a great presentation, really shows what our community is about – Community. We don’t want to exclude speakers or bloggers, we want more! I blogged about that in the post series on blogging. A few people in the audience said they would start blogging or speaking. I really hope they do. Great presentation!

Tim Ford (@SQLAgentMan on twitter) – He said he was off because he was sick but he gave a good presentation anyway. He talked about tips for harnessing the power of Lazy as a DBA. Some good tips (including using templates for a baseline server installation process. That is awesome and I have a huge need for that in my day job, I’ll be implementing his idea very soon)

Kendal Van Dyke (again) – He gave a great presentation on SSD storage options with pros/cons and honest feedback/caveats. I haven’t yet played with it and his talk gave me some great food for thought. I was very impressed by his cold reboot mid-presentation. I have never seen a Windows laptop reboot so quick. One thing I may do is change my laptop drive real soon

Jeffry Schwartz – I met Jeffry at the PAC meeting. He is a really thoughtful, intelligent and in tune with performance kind of guy. His talk was great. He didn’t talk a lot about SQL Server but he talked about “performance outside the box”. He got into counters I don’t play with much in perfmon (DPCs, Processor interrupts) and talked about a lot of really good, geeky hardware and OS information. I am used to SQL Server sessions devoted a lot more to performance counters within SQL and SQL performance. Jeffry reminded us of something that should be common sense (but not always is a first instinct for folks) –> sometimes performance problems have nothing to do with SQL. He showed us some tools and tips to help see when someone else on your SAN is the blame, or when the system is to blame or even a driver/NIC configuration. I really hope to see Jeffry speak at the PASS Summit for a longer session.

Going Home Mike

Well that’s it. Going home Mike is tired (the sugar rush from the sweet tea is wearing off), filled with knowledge and excited to speak again. I won’t be doing any SQL Saturday’s until at least fall with baby number 3 (Sam) coming sometime around the end of May. I pay my own way and have a family to support. Plus my time will be devoted to getting the Seacoast NH/ME/MA SQL chapter working with our first meeting coming in April.

I may even to submit a Professional Development chat to PASS or perhaps even a variation of my DBA talk from SQL Saturday.

Again, thanks to the sponsors, this was a memorable time! I stole my picture from this stream: http://sqlsentry.smugmug.com/Events/2010-03-SQLsaturday33/11432245_nDzgG I am hoping they don’t mind

Did you go? What did you go listen to? What did you take away? Let us know in the comments or a post of your own.

It’s Tuesday somewhere when this post goes up. In fact when this goes live it will be sometime around Tuesday afternoon or evening in Adelaide Australia. Why there? This month’s “T-SQL Tuesday” is being hosted by Rob Farley over at his place. His topic is “relationships”. He talks about the history of T-SQL Tuesday over at his post and I encourage you to check it out.

In honor of Valentine’s day, he wanted us to all chat about relationships with no other specificity other than having some sort of a relationship to our day jobs with SQL Server.  A few directions came into mind, come along on a journey through the rambling thoughts in my mind. Let me know what you think in the comments, I’d love to hear your opinion.

Customer Relationships

This past weekend I experienced some customer service that made me think back to my own abilities in this area (and where I can improve). You might read about another such lesson I learned at my town dump a few months back when posting about the importance of attitude at work. Anyway, I ordered from a smaller pizza store in town. They don’t get a lot of business (new kid on the block) but I wanted a calzone. The former owner (and older Greek man) made a good one with Spinach, Feta, Mushrooms and Kalamata Olives with olive oil and garlic. Called and ordered that. No questions/complaints (Until I got there). To continue the point let me contrast how I came upon this idea of a calzone with the former owner…

A Positive Example

Now the former owner used to have to chop the non-pitted olives up but he offered to do that. In fact when I was first in there and ordered the calzone without the olives he got excited and said something like, “no one up this way ever wants something like that.. they want sauce and pizza cheese.. How about we put some olives in there too?” He made it up, we chatted while it cooked and he took an interest in me. Asked me questions about my family, about living in town, etc. Nothing annoying, nothing prying. He just seemed to care about me. I asked him about business, about Greece and we just chatted between customers picking up orders (Did I mention I live in a small town? Smaller shop, not a lot of business unfortunately.. The popular pizza place has been established by another Greek family for some time and they dominate the “market”). Great Calzone and I ordered it from time to time…

Under New Management

Flash forward to this past weekend. I called up, ordered this calzone for the first time with the new owners (I knew there was new ownership because we ordered a pizza a while back and the young owner was quick to ask “have you been here recently? we have new ownership… I just wanted to let you know our prices went up so you aren’t surprised”). No questions/comments over the phone, I even said “the old owner used to cut up the olives, if you guys can that’s great otherwise don’t worry about it”) When I went to pick it up the owner, his mother and a female employee were lazing about and I was greeted not with a hello but with, “Just so you know… Those olives are expensive, we normally use regular black olives on pizza. Plus there are pits, my mother had to cut them up with a knife.. If we do this for you next time we will have to charge you 1 dollar.” I had already paid and didn’t offer to pay the difference (price was already astronomical ) but I did say, “oh.. sorry I used to get them like that with the other guy”… The response? “Yeah.. That old guy used to always do special requests for customers, that’s one of the reasons he isn’t here anymore, you know?” I didn’t comment on the fact that the “old guy” was just one person working, here is 3 people with one customer.. I just nodded and left, likely for good until this guy goes out of business and new management comes in…

The Day Job Lesson?

Yeah, I know. Conciseness is key but the story above illustrates a few points to remember with the relationship to our “customers”, managers, vendors, etc. As a DBA, the developers are my customers. To a developer, perhaps a DBA can be seen as a consultant or vendor. No matter how you define it, a relationship exists. Customer satisfaction is a good goal. Some thoughts:

• Going the extra mile isn’t always bad – At the pizza place doing extra for each customer may not be wise but every once in awhile? Might make a repeat customer. As a DBA, always doing something extra for every customer may mean a week that never ends. But… There is a happy medium. Where you can do so safely, a little more is a good goal.
• Why are you telling someone the impact to you? I am not saying don’t tell them but ask why. If you are just whining to brag about how you went above and beyond and complain at how horrible it was for you, save it. Save your breath. Just quiet down and go and beat the expectations for the sake of doing a good job.
• Happy Customer – Happy Provider- At the pizza place a happy customer means I’ll go back. As a DBA? Maybe a developer will be more likely to listen to some advice or guidelines if you aren’t always whining, complaining and doing the bare minimum.

Relationships Work

I used a lot of my words in the above post. Just a reminder here that set based logic and normalized databases generally work out just fine. I still hear people come to job interviews and say things like “normalization is a great concept academically” or “I never normalize too far, then there are too many tables”. Blah. Blech, even. I am not saying every database needs to get to the highest level of normalization but go for it and try a higher bit of normalization than you are currently willing to. Performance and Integrity will thank you. Sure, in some cases the read performance might even take a slight, barely noticeable hint. But your maintainability, data integrity and update/insert cost may just improve at the same time for a couple ms here or there.

The rules of normalization still apply (40 years later! That is pretty neat… I work with in 2010 in IT with a technology that is by and large based on the same bedrock that was there before I was born.. not a lot of .net developers can say that and it isn’t “legacy”) and good database design eliminates many performance problems. In fact taking the time to properly design your database today will mean there is a much slimmer chance that you’ll ever need to hire the likes of me to come in on a tuning or “what the heck is happening to data quality!?” project. Louis Davidson (and others) wrote a good book on this subject, Pro SQL Server 2008 Relational Database Design and Implementation , is a great resource (so are his earlier versions). The first section of the MVP Deep Dives book which covers design decisions is worth the price of the book alone (then you get a bonus of a multitude of other, post-design concerns in the book)

Go and read some of the early papers in the life of the database as we mostly know it today, like this paper from E.F. Codd. Heck – spend some time clicking around in Wikipedia even, start in normalization and click on what you don’t know. Then apply some basic principles:

• Normalize your database. Go through the motions and understand normalization and ask the right questions of your data model (joins are not inherently evil, especially in 2010 with DBMS’ and hardware where they are…)
• Define your relationships explicitly at the database level if you care about integrity (sure there are some cases where you may be better served not to but in most databases I have worked with, they would have benefited from integrity and possibly join elimination for some outer joins to dimension tables)
• Model – No, wipe that zoolander face off please… Model your database, define your relationships before you start working. Some seem to have the, “real data professionals don’t do data models” mentality -  That’s bull. (though, I’ve had quiche from time to time, so your mileage may vary).

Check out the rest of the links that will go up on Rob Farley’s SQL Blog at the conclusion of this event. I am sure there will be some great posts (and then there will be some like this random relationship rambling but it will be worth it when you find the good ones)

What do you think? Should us DBAs send Valentines to our developer friends like our kids do at school?