Tag: life

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to if you’re busy, allow yourself to pause and take a break.

I suck at this. I mean, I am really bad at this. When I’m busy, I usually go from task to task. I get in the flow of some things, but often I have a disparate set of items to tackle, and I’ll keep going, forgetting to get up and take a break. I even sometimes make a pot of coffee, have one cup, and look up to find it’s 1:00pm. I’ve been at my desk for hours.

I do feel the stress sometimes, and I am trying to remind myself that taking 2-3 minutes to walk outside or stop and stare is OK. I might get lightly distracted on the Internet, but that’s not the same. I really should just take a break.

In the past I have had mixed success. Even the week I am writing this (13-17 Sep), I’m slightly better, but really it’s because I’m in a different environment.

I’ll try to keep this in mind in the coming days when I’m back at home. Stop, get up, take a break.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to get outside today and give your mind a natural boost.

I live in Colorado because of the great weather. My wife and I decided to move here for the views, the sun, and the ability to be outdoors most of the year.

Getting outside is a coping mechanism that I’ve enjoyed for most of my life.

Today this is easy. I’m working remotely in Santa Fe, where my wife is competing in a dressage show. While I’m working most of the day in our camper, I will get up and cook breakfast outside. I’ll walk over to the arenas to help my wife get ready and film a bit, and I hope to get a short hike in as well this afternoon.

Even when I’m working, with windows open, and a nice breeze, it almost feels like I’m outside as I can watch the views on the West side just outside of Santa Fe.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to be as kind to yourself as you would to a loved one.

A tricky one today. After all, our loved ones are sometimes the ones that hurt us most, or upset us the most. I think we can sometimes get angrier at family than outsiders.

In any case, we often show our love, affection, and caring for our family in many ways, especially little ones. We put ourselves out for them, and we work to ensure they are happy, content, and joyous in life.

I need to remember that while I find ways to forgive and accept family, I struggle to do that to myself. I can be hard on myself, chastising myself in my mind for mistakes.

I’m telling myself today to accept myself as a flawed person. One who makes mistakes, mistakes I can learn from, but I can’t dwell on.

I give this advice to others and need to follow it myself.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to aim to be good enough, rather than perfect.

I used to aim for perfection. In the 80s, a lot of writing in business looked at the success of the Japanese manufacturers and their focus on being perfect in many ways. Not that they get there, but they aimed for perfection. This drove me in my career in many ways, helping me to adopt testing, documentation, and re-checking work.

Over time I realized that this didn’t work well for me in many ways. I could get caught up in making something better than it needed to be and spend more time than necessary. There were also problems and situations where I couldn’t even find perfection, which also drove me crazy.

I found in my career, that perfection can also vary. What I think as perfect as a developer or sysadmin isn’t what a client might think. I learned to be effective and solve problems. Not just a patch for the moment, but an imperfect patch that could las for some time. A decision that I might have to revisit if things changed, but that was good enough for now.

I learned to get things done. Today, I continue to do that, especially in speaking. I’m not aiming for the perfect take in presentations. A movie scene may take 10, 20, or more takes to get right. I’ve certainly approached some video recordings like this.

Now I accept some small mistakes, mis-speaks, stutters, or other imperfections. In the grand scheme of what I’m trying to do, it’s good enough, though certainly not perfect.

When I coach, I aim to keep improving the athletes. Helping them to grow and become better, but not obsessing over things not being perfect. Instead, we want to be good, and more importantly, be able to adapt and still be successful.

This isn’t to aim at being half-assed, but more that we find some 侘寂 (wabi sabi).