Day 16 - Relax!

Always make time for relaxation or distraction. Systems administration comes with interrupts, strategy changes, management decisions, and beeping pagers. All of these can lead to stress. Stress is bad and can lead to burnout.

There are plenty of ways to manage stress, and you can easily find volumes of books on the subject. Mostly, I think managing stress is making a context switch away to something you enjoy doing: exercise, reading, learning, TV, whatever. You had things you enjoyed doing before the pager started beeping at 4AM on Saturdays, right?

Managing stress doesn't just mean relaxing, it might mean setting expectations for your fellow coworkers. This means explaining (and having your manager back you), for instance, that the build server doesn't need a serious SLA that includes late nights and weekends.

When pondering what to publish tonight, I decided that I needed a break. Writing and researching for these articles has taken away from my normal non-work activites after work and added some stress. With that said, I'm going to take so my own advice and keep this short, and go play with my doggy and hang out with the wife.

See you all tomorrow!

Further reading:

• Puppet FAQ - If you destress by learning things (like I sometimes do), check out Puppet.