Tag: life

I’ll hear people constantly say they don’t have time to work on their career. They can’t attend a UG meeting to network. They can’t spare a minute to go through a Stairway Series. They have family commitments, kids, hobbies, volunteer activities, spiritual needs, and more. That’s not even counting all the work they need to get done as a part of their job. When can they spend time on R or Machine Learning or CosmosDB or anything else?

I get it. My life is chaotic as well, with deadlines and a pile of work that never goes away. I sometimes dread travel and vacation because that means my work piles up on either side of those events. This is on top of commitments to keep up on chores at home (I have cooking and laundry), fix things at the ranch, spend time with kids, get date nights with my wife, and still get to the gym. Most weeks feel like a crazy treadmill for me.

In my life and career, I’ve learned a few things. One of which is that I need to prioritize what’s important to me. That often helps me decide when to do X instead of Y. I regularly make choices between opportunities, but I also try to evaluate the relative importance of events. I rarely miss family events or kid activities, but sometimes I do. I know that there are times that I feel my work is more important in the moment. However, I try to balance those out to be sure I remember that family is more important overall.

I’ve also learned that I can find time for things that are important. I have to adjust priorities and scheduling. It is important to not just overload myself with more work, which is easy to do. I find that if I try to get more done in a week, I can’t do that for long. Like a big project at work, I’ll burn out without balance. Instead, I’ve learned to let something go a bit, or cut back on some part of my life to make a little time.

Everyone can spare some time. Especially those of us in the technology industry. We need to learn and grow, even if it’s just for ourselves. We need to keep our brain’s active, and on a regular basis, we should try something new. Other professions can do this, and we should as well.

I know you can’t dedicate a half a day a week to a class, but maybe you can spend 30 minutes or so working through a book. I know you can’t make the user group every month, but you can make one or two meetings a year if that’s something you enjoy. You can’t go through all our Stairways, or maybe not even all of the Indexing levels in that series, but you can start learning a bit more with one. Perhaps you can’t make SQL Saturday this year in your area, but is it worth a bit of your day to watch a presentation from the SQL Bits archives?

I bet it’s possible, and I bet you can find a little time every month or two to grow a bit as a technology craftsman. Make sure you take care of yourself, and actively work on your career, in balance with the rest of your life.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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This editorial was originally published on May 2, 2012. It is being re-run as Steve is at SQL Bits.

I’m halfway through my career, having spent about 20 years since college working in technology with another twenty to go. The rest of the community is probably spread out around me, some older, some younger. It doesn’t matter what part of your life you are in, there are a few things about work that I think always apply. The first is that we work to live, and don’t live to work. The second is I like to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

It’s all too common for people in this business to overwork themselves, work very long hours, and neglect the rest of their life. I have rarely seen someone that is retired or late in life complain that they didn’t work enough over their lifetime, and I’d caution you to keep that in mind as you go through life. There will always be more work, more things to do, and more requests from clients and customers. Keep a balance in your life, and remember to enjoy it along the way.

The second part of my advice can apply in many parts of our career, but it ought to apply to our finances and our retirement. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a few articles like this one that notes many people have not funded their retirements well. We all have expenses, and it’s easy to delay the investments in our life until later, but that is a bad idea. Whether it’s your IRA/401K or your health, you’d be better off sacrificing a little today for a little more security later.

In the US, many employers match contributions and you ought to take advantage of that. There are all sorts of options for retirement, like ROTH IRAs, that it seems many people aren’t aware of. I also meet many people that don’t realize they can borrow against their 401K as well, taking a loan whose interest goes back to your own account. There are few excuses to not plan for the future. Enjoy today, but plan to live a long time and to enjoy your retirement.

How much money you might need depends on your lifestyle, and that’s something you should spend time thinking about and talking with your family about. Many of us may not be able to retire at 65, or count on social security, but I’d hate to have to work longer than I want to because I cannot afford to retire.

Steve Jones