Don’t be afraid of that title – I’m not talking about Six Sigma or anything super-formal here. In many organizations, there are more folks in other IT roles than in the Data Professional area. In other words, there are more developers, system administrators and so on than there are the “DBA” role.

That means we often have more to do than the time we need to do it. And, oddly enough, the first thing that is sacrificed is process improvement – the little things we need to do to make the day go faster in the first place. Then we get even more behind, the work piles up and…well, you know all about that.

Earlier I challenged you to find 10-30 minutes a day to study. Some folks wrote back and asked “where do I start”? Well, why not be super-efficient and combine that time with learning how to make yourself more efficient? Try out a new scripting language, learn a new tool that automates things or find out ways others have automated their systems. In general, find out what you’re doing and how, and then see if that can be improved. It’s kind of like doing a performance tuning gig on yourself!

If you’re pressed for time, look for bite-sized articles (like the ones I’ve done here for PowerShell and SQL Server) that you can follow in a “serial” fashion. In a short time you’ll have a new set of knowledge you can use to make your day faster.