Still Relevant Today? | Time Management for System Administrators Book Review скачать в хорошем качестве

Still Relevant Today? | Time Management for System Administrators Book Review

Time Management for System Administrators – Book Review In this episode of Ari’s Quest Log, I review Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli — a book I read as part of my Reading Roadmap (Learning) in November 2025. The timing of this review turned out to be perfect. During a busy office carpet replacement project, I had to plan and coordinate the relocation of workstations, servers, desks, and cabinets — while continuing ISO 27001 / ISMS implementation and daily operational IT support. This book doesn’t promise productivity hacks or deep-work fantasy schedules. Instead, it starts from a realistic assumption: interruptions are part of the job for system administrators. Although the book is older and some examples are outdated, the core ideas remain highly relevant: Interrupt-driven work is structural, not a personal failure Traditional time management often doesn’t work for sysadmins Planning, documentation, and buffers are essential You should not be the single point of failure — technically or mentally For me, this was a reminder that good mental models outlast tools. Even today, the principles still apply — especially in complex environments involving infrastructure, compliance, and operational responsibility. ⭐ My rating: 5/5 – A must-read for system administrators and IT managers. If you’re responsible for infrastructure and feel like your days are constantly eaten by interruptions, this book may still be very much worth your time. #TimeManagementForSystemAdministrators #ThomasLimoncelli #SystemAdministratorBook #ITManagement #SysadminProductivity #ISO27001 #AriQuestLog #BookReview 00:00 – Introduction & Context 00:50 – Office Move & Carpet Replacement Chaos 02:18 – ISO 27001, ISMS & Ongoing Work 02:52 – Mental & Physical Fatigue 03:15 – About the Book 04:07 – The Book Is Old (But…) 04:51 – Core Ideas Still Relevant 05:23 – Why Traditional Time Management Fails 06:01 – Planning, Buffers & Single Point of Failure 06:45 – Office Move Reflection 07:22 – Feeling Overwhelmed Isn’t Failure 08:00 – Where the Book Shows Its Age 08:38 – Mental Models Still Hold Up 09:03 – Who Is This Book For? 09:52 – Final Reflection 10:18 – Rating: 5/5 11:07 – Closing -- Transcript -- Welcome to Ari's Quest Log. Today I want to talk about a book review, but before I do that I want to share a bit of context, because the timing of making this video is honestly kind of perfect. The book I am reviewing is Time Management for System Administrators. I read it as part of my Reading Roadmap Learning in November 2025. The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me. At the office we had carpet replacements, which actually sounds simple, but in practice it meant that we had to move basically everything. Our workstations, our servers, our screens, our desks, even almost all had to be dismantled. Our cabinets, all to a temporary location on which the floor was not to be replaced. And all that of course also had to be moved back. And that meant creating a plan, a real plan. Who moves what, when, in which order, what needs to stay online as long as possible, what can go down, what needs to be tested again afterwards. And next to that there was also a lot of physical work involved, emptying cabinets, looking through old stuff, deciding what to throw away, what to keep, what to store differently. And all of that happened while the normal work just continued. ISO 27001, the ISMS implementation didn't stop, colleagues still had questions and issues, needed help,. And things also still broke sometimes. So things still needed attention. So it was a combination of planning work, operational IT work, physical work, a lot of context switching. And I noticed at the end of those days I was not only mentally ill, well not ill. But tired, but also physically tired. And this is important for this video. As I said, in November 2025 I read Time Management for System Administrators. And this book, it is written, yeah, especially for system administrators and IT professionals. And not in a motivational or inspirational way, but in a very practical, realistic way. It is not pretending that you can just block four hours of deep work every day and be done with it. It starts from the assumption that interruptions are part of the job. Now I do want to say one thing upfront. This book is old. Some of the examples are outdated, some tools that it mentioned don't really exist anymore or are no longer relevant. And if you're looking for modern productivity apps or cloud era workflows, you won't really find it in this book. However, and this is important, the core ideas of this book are still relevant, maybe even more relevant. Now than when it was written. Because this book, it is not really about tools. It's about understanding the nature of system administration work.