#TSQL2sday: My Life Hack is an Hourglass. Yes, an Hourglass.
For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Jess Pomfret asked for our favorite life hacks.
My life hack is a half-hour hourglass. (Halfhourglass?) Seriously, an actual physical object:
I keep it on my desk. Whenever I start working on a task, I flip the glass. After 30 minutes, I need to stop and assess the progress I’ve made so far.
When I’m tuning a query, for example, I’ll stop there and ask myself, “Are the results here good enough?” If so, then I need to switch gears and start writing documentation to explain the changes I made to the query, or start testing the output.
I’ve tried digital timers, but they add a feeling of nervous pressure, especially when the alarm goes off. An hourglass feels calming to me, and it’s so much more flexible and forgiving. I can just glance down at the hourglass and get a rough idea of what kind of progress I’m making. I only glance down at natural breaking points, so that way I can stay focused for a little bit longer to finish a train of thought.
I use it a lot during my Mastering Query Tuning class, and students often end up buying their own and posting pictures in the Slack chat.
They don’t make my particular model anymore, but if you’d like to buy your own, these are my favorite new ones because you can pick your sand color and your duration.
There’s also Marc Newson’s Hourglass. Quite fetching. Very reasonably priced at just $12,000 – which sounds expensive, until you realize that it’s about the same as two cores of SQL Server Enterprise Edition. And then it sounds REALLY expensive.
Yeah, um, no.
16 Comments. Leave new
I think this is a brilliant idea… And it reminded me of the book (and movie) “About a Boy”. Quote from movie: “I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour. Taking a bath: one unit, watching countdown: one unit, web-based research: two units, exercising: three units, having my hair carefully disheveled: four units. It’s amazing how the day fills up, and I often wonder, to be absolutely honest, if I’d ever have time for a job; how do people cram them in?”
I LOVED THAT MOVIE! It’s really funny, when I’m on vacation, I think about that quote ALL THE TIME. I’m tickled pink that you made that connection too.
Who is in the picture on the wall? 🙂
That’s by Michael J Swart: https://michaeljswart.com/2016/11/im-sharing-some-cool-art-prints/
? Framed and displayed! Wow. Today’s a good day
And visible on all of my client calls, too. 😀
*Purchased* Awesome simple idea.
I use half a bottle of Tequila. Somehow I never get as far as assessing my progress.
HA!
I love this idea. I frequently use a Pomodoro App on my phone;; but I like the idea of an hourglass on my desk. It’s a nice, subtle nudge to stay focused.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
Love the idea, might buy one of those cheaper hourglasses.
I’ve got a Pomodoro app on my phone, but yeah… that’s my phone, and as much as I can turn off notifications it might not be enough to prevent me from getting sidetracked.
The best lifehack since sliced bread – or did the hourglass came first? Anyway, a very interesting idea, I immediately bought me a nice hourglass. For a price closer to the Express Edition, that is.
Heh… I’m old, so I don’t need an hourglass… “It Depends” has two meaning for me. 😀
[…] Brent suggests using a (half) hour glass to assess progress made and keep him on track. He also links to a beautiful wallet damaging hourglass. […]
I was asking my self… How can I be more effective? Well… he has a Targa, travels all the time and has a “life”. Maybe I should ask Brent how he manages tasks. I found this on my LinkedIn… Thanks, Brent
Hahaha, you’re welcome!