A happy SA deals well with stress and an
endless incoming workload, looks forward to going to work each day, and has
a positive relationship with customers, coworkers, and managers. Happiness
is feeling sufficiently in control of your work life and having a good social and
family life. It means feeling like you're accomplishing something and deriving
satisfaction from your job. It means getting along well with the people you
work with, as well as with the management above you.
Just as happiness means different things to different people, various tech-
niques in this chapter may appeal more to some readers than to others. Mostly,
we've tried to list what has worked for us. For example, of the hundreds of
books on time management, we try to list the 10 percent of such books that
apply to issues SAs face. If you think that books on time management are
90 percent junk, we hope that we've covered the remaining 10 percent for
you here.
The happy SAs we've met share certain habits: good personal skills, good
communication skills, self-psychology, and techniques for managing their
managers. We use the word habits because people do them unconsciously, as
they might tap their fingers when they hear a song on the radio.
These behaviors come naturally to some people but need to be learned by
others. Books, lectures, classes, conferences, and even training camps teach
these techniques. It's pretty amazing that happiness comes from a set of skills
that can be developed through practice! Making a habit of a technique isn't
easy. Don't expect immediate success. If you try again and again, it will be-
come easier and easier. A common rule of thumb is that a habi
From (The Practice Of System And Network Administration)
endless incoming workload, looks forward to going to work each day, and has
a positive relationship with customers, coworkers, and managers. Happiness
is feeling sufficiently in control of your work life and having a good social and
family life. It means feeling like you're accomplishing something and deriving
satisfaction from your job. It means getting along well with the people you
work with, as well as with the management above you.
Just as happiness means different things to different people, various tech-
niques in this chapter may appeal more to some readers than to others. Mostly,
we've tried to list what has worked for us. For example, of the hundreds of
books on time management, we try to list the 10 percent of such books that
apply to issues SAs face. If you think that books on time management are
90 percent junk, we hope that we've covered the remaining 10 percent for
you here.
The happy SAs we've met share certain habits: good personal skills, good
communication skills, self-psychology, and techniques for managing their
managers. We use the word habits because people do them unconsciously, as
they might tap their fingers when they hear a song on the radio.
These behaviors come naturally to some people but need to be learned by
others. Books, lectures, classes, conferences, and even training camps teach
these techniques. It's pretty amazing that happiness comes from a set of skills
that can be developed through practice! Making a habit of a technique isn't
easy. Don't expect immediate success. If you try again and again, it will be-
come easier and easier. A common rule of thumb is that a habi
From (The Practice Of System And Network Administration)
