Tag: life

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

I’m in the UK today, and at the Redgate office for part of the time. One of the things that I like to do when I’m there is walk outside for a few minutes. Being back in an office is very stimulating, and it can be hectic for me. I’ll often schedule a lot of meetings to get time with people while I’m there.

I’ve learned a couple small breaks outside relax me during a stressful time. I’ll take a couple of those today.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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 coping tip is to make time to aim to be good enough, rather than perfect.

I find that many of us that work in technology want a solution to be great. Often perfect. Computers are so good at following instructions that we expect them to work as we intend all the time. We aim for this perfect in our code and we find “good enough” to be a low bar.

However, good enough means to me that it is good enough for most situations. It’s not leaving something unfinished or undone, but finishing something that works well. I often tackle chores in this manner, usually because of time crunches.

Recently I was traveling a bit. I was gone from home for 15 days in August, and during those stretches, it rained quite a bit. The grass grew near the house, and I came home from a trip with a few commitments and kept delaying cutting it, thinking it would just take a few minutes and I’d get to it. With another 8 day vacation, I ran out of time and left town.

I came home to grass that was really high, but I had other priorities. I needed to fix our gate, as my wife is using the front pasture and we need to keep horses in. Another busy weekend, and I got to the grass Sunday afternoon. I cut it and then needed to rake up the excessive clippings. As I did, I realized that there were a few stretches that had gotten weighed down and as I rake them, they stood up a bit. Not a clean lawn.

However, it was good enough for the weekend. I still needed to edge with the weed trimmer, so I left them, finished edging and walked away. I can go back later this week and recut the lawn, even though most won’t need it.

Good enough for today.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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 coping tip is to make time to do something you really enjoy.

I do enjoy life, and I’m lucky that I have the chance to do a lot of things that I enjoy. One of those is watching and coaching volleyball. Technology helps here in a few ways, which lets me cope with a busy life.

These were on two days, but both were enjoyable times for me. First, thanks to cheap bandwidth and streaming technology, I was able to watch my daughter play volleyball in New York. My wife and I got up early and spent an hour watching her play last Saturday before we got on with our day.

Second, I left work a touch early to go watch high school volleyball, seeing a kid that I will coach this coming season play for her school. It’s a fun, enjoyable time, and one of the few times I can cheer for this kid without looking for ways to improve.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.