Voice of the DBA

Tag: grinding

  • Grinding Away: Mary Spender

    A few years ago I stumbled on this video and loved it.

    That led me to Mary’s page and this cover of John Mayer’s Stop This Train:

    Since then I’ve been following her, watching this musician build a life around her music, her videos, and more. Her site is at https://www.maryspender.com/ and I was sad that I wasn’t in the UK during her tour last fall. However, I still follow her videos, where she describes how she approaches the music business, or song writing or her craft, etc.

    Making a living as a musician has been her dream and while that slightly pivoted, she still works in and around music. She is making it, though I’m not sure she’s getting rich or living the easy life. My view from the outside is she grinds away every week at producing content and music that will allow her to continue doing so.

    This might be a treadmill of sorts, but it’s also the one she chooses and enjoys. Music is her passion and finding a way to make a living doing something you love is admirable.

    However this takes work. It’s a grind. Maybe an enjoyable one for her, but still regular work.

  • Grinding Away: Brent Ozar

    Brent Ozar is a very successful DBA/consultant/speaker/business owner in the data platform space. Many of you have likely seen him speak, read his blog, used his sp_Blitz script, or taken one of his classes. He’s achieved a lot and I know many people that would like to get to the place where he is in life. Most of us would love to teach a few classes, do office hours from wherever we are, and custom order a sports car for fun.

    One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about watching Brent move through life is his life quest. You can read this, but I’d recommend scrolling to the bottom (Level 1) and then going up through history. These are various items of achievement, some adventures, some things he had to work through.

    I’ve known Brent a long time. I remember when he started speaking, when his blog started to grow, and I have watched him put in a lot of hard work.

    He’s been grinding for most of his life and only recently slowed down. Before that, he spent a lot of time trying to improve his skills. He worked lots of hours to learn about SQL Server. He got his employer to send him to the SQL Server Ranger class to become a certified SQL Server Master and he studied hard to achieve that. Many of his goals around building his business or speaking to large crowds required investment of time and money to learn how to accomplish the goal.

    And he’s told many of you how to do the things he’s done. He shares lots of thoughts on what has worked for him, some things that didn’t, and given you a blueprint to become a better DBA, consultant, speaker or anything else.

    You just have to do it (and want to do it).

    If you want a good example, one of his early posts is on coding for his class reunion, a volunteer effort. Time spent forcing himself to learn.

  • Grinding Away: Iris Classon

    Iris Classon is a developer and Microsoft MVP. She has had a lot of success across the last decade plus. This is her second career, deciding in 2011 to leave her profession as a registered clinical dietician to learn to program. Here’s an excerpt of an interview:

    “Well, the first few days sucked. I mean—yes, you might want to beep that out. Because our teachers are doing, counting, talking about binaries, and I had forgotten all the math. They’re talking about binary numbers and doing all the calculations. They’re talking about hardware as well, which I didn’t know anything about. I know now, but not then.

    I was so frustrated. On the second day, I was like, “I want to go home.” I was kind of upset and stuff, so my teacher drove me home and we had a long chat, and he said, “Iris, come back. We kind of need a personality like that. You just come back. Give it the rest of the week and you’ll see.”

    On the third day, when I came back—I did come back—we started programming. We did our first little console application, and I just realized I just got it. I would turn around and look at my classmates. Some of them just seemed confused and I was like, “What is the problem? I mean, this is logic.”

    For the first time in my life, I understood what was written.”

    Her first year of programming is documented on her site, and it’s a neat read to me. The important thing is to remember she documented this daily during that year. It’s summarized now, but she was grinding away.

    What I like about this

    This is a story I think shows practically how to improve yourself and get better at something new. I have remembered this story as I tried to learn to coach over the last ten years, and as I continue to work on trying to improve my skills.

    This is also in tech, and it gives you a way to look at yourself and try to improve your skills to find a better position, or maybe the position you really want.

    What I don’t like about this

    Not everyone can take time off to improve for a year, though this is something most of you could do across 3-4 years.

    I also don’t want to make it seem like anyone can do this. Everyone has certain genetic gifts, and they are drawn to certain things. Iris clearly is drawn to very logical work and has a gift for programming. Your experience, raw talent, and understanding might not be as good.

    You can get better, but you walk your path and you have to remember that. Reading other stories can sometimes feel like I can’t do that. You won’t likely do the same thing, but you can improve yourself a lot of you grind away.

  • Grinding Away: Kobe Bryant

    I saw this story from Robert Horry, one of the greatest clutch shooters in basketball. Don’t know it’s true, but I think it is.

    When I got traded to the Lakers in ’97, Kobe Bryant was just a rookie. The dude couldn’t shoot threes. We would play this shooting game every day after practice. It was me, Kobe, Brian Shaw, Mitch Richmond and Kurt Rambis. Kobe would lose every time. We would get to practice the next day and sure enough, Kobe would already be there shooting nothing but threes. Like clockwork, at the end of practice he’d say, “Let’s play the game! I’m ready for you.” And we would beat his ass again.

    He would never stop. It was incredible. He practiced until one day, a couple months later, he finally won. If you literally said, “Kobe, I bet you can’t make five in a row by dropping the ball and kicking it in from half court,” that motherfucker would go out there and practice it until he could do it. And that’s what people don’t understand when they talk about champions — when they talk about a winner’s mentality. Kobe’s dedication to the game is unreal.

    In case you think this isn’t true, listen to Kobe in this interview.

    Why I like this

    To compete against others, you have to work harder. I tell kids I coach that it isn’t enough to get better in sports, but you have to get better faster than others are getting better. That takes work, it takes setbacks, it takes failures. It takes effort to overcome those to get better.

    You might not have the raw talent to be one of the best every in your area, but you can be really, really good, and you can compete with many others.

    The modern world, with jobs being remote, companies hiring everywhere, more tech people wanting jobs, you need to compete well, which means work.

    Work to improve.

    Why I don’t like this

    I do think that Kobe worked in a very narrow domain, playing his sport. His sport didn’t change much, and he just needed to improve his skills, while knowing how to work against others. He was competing in a narrower space, against many knowns.

    For many of us, our world is more complex, with many more dimensions of new technologies, unknown demands or desires from employers (or potential employers), and an every growing set of things that appear in our industry.

    Driving to continue to be better is good, but you’ll never get to be amazing in everything in tech, or even one platform. Keep some balance and remember there are other important things in your life. Not so important you shouldn’t improve, but important enough to require some of your time.