If you’re not familiar with the Unstuck Business Academy, it’s a great resource designed to help small business owners overcome obstacles to growing their businesses. Check it out.

Kudos to Brent Barcus of i65music for producing the podcast.

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Free SQL Server Training Resources

Often these IT Professionals, sometimes called “Accidental DBAs,” do an admirable job, even with little formal SQL Server training. Fortunately, there are a lot of great resources available online for the “Accidental DBA.” Here are a few free SQL Server learning resources worth checking out:

1. Microsoft Resources and Labs

Microsoft has put together quite a few learning opportunities available to the public for free. These are in several different formats so you can pick the one you’re most comfortable with. Here are a few you may want to check out:

1. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (CTP 3.2) Lab. In this self-paced lab, you’ll learn how to use SQL Server 2019 to solve business challenges.
2. Microsoft AI School. Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic in today’s business environment. In Microsoft AI School, you’ll “find the information, learning materials, and resources you need to start building intelligence into your solutions.”
3. SQL Server Tutorials. More than just Online Documentation, SQL Docs is a great place for detailed information about how to use SQL Server. It includes tutorials that will step you through learning the database technology.
4. EdX. Founded by Harvard and MIT, EdX is a place where education is freely available to everyone online. Microsoft has partnered with EdX to provide free courses online for SQL Server. Here are a few:
   • Querying Data with Transact-SQL.
   • Developing SQL Databases.
   • Analyzing and Visualizing Data with SQL Server Reporting Services.
5. Channel 9. Microsoft produces a lot of video content for SQL Server and other products. They make it available online via Channel 9.

2. YouTube Channels

YouTube can be a great resource for learning just about anything. From changing a tire to playing the ukulele, you can find it on YouTube. It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of great SQL Server training videos available as well. Of course, since just about anyone can create a video, you’ll want to be careful. Not everyone is the expert that they portend to be online. Do your own research. Here are a couple of places to start.

1. SQL Server YouTube Search. A list of SQL Server-related videos.
2. Microsoft SQL Server YouTube Channel. Microsoft SQL Server home on YouTube.

3. SQLSaturdays and Virtual Groups

For many years, I was on the board of Directors for a global user group called PASS. The organization is committed to providing learning opportunities for professionals around the globe and to helping the community to better connect with one another. There are a couple of ways PASS helps with this.

1. SQLSaturdays are a series of free one-day training events in cities around the world. These events, as the name suggests are held on Saturdays and are free to attend. They typically have some of the best and most well-known SQL Server experts around. Look for a SQLSaturday near you and plan to attend. You’ll see some great content and better yet make some incredible connections.
2. Virtual Groups. Through live webinars, PASS Virtual Groups offer top-notch training no matter where you happen to be. Check out a list of upcoming webinars.

Summary

With a new release every 18 to 24 months, keeping up with the latest changes can be a challenge. Hopefully, these free resources will help. We also have an ever growing SQL Script Library available to help get you started with some of the more common tasks.

Want to work with The Sero Group?

Want to learn more about how SERO Group helps organizations take the guesswork out of managing their SQL Servers? It’s easy and there is no obligation. 

Schedule a call with us to get started.

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The post Unhappy at Work? The Choice is Yours appeared first on The SERO Group.

That’s the premise of Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley. In it, Stanley contends that we are all far too busy. We have too many commitments at work and at home; we’re stretched too thin, being pulled in every direction. There’s no way we’ll accomplish everything. Sound familiar?

So Many Things, So Little Time

So what do we do? We try as hard as we can. We spend a few extra hours at work to try to get caught up, cheating our family of that time. We take a long lunch or call in sick to get some personal things done, cheating work.

But we still come up short. No matter how hard we try, some things will be left undone. There’s just too much to do. We can’t do it all. We will miss some commitments that we’ve made. The only question is which ones.

Who Are Cheating?

For many of us, the two largest sources of commitments come from work and family. Think about those for a moment.

At work, you are replaceable. As good as you may be at your job, you’re still replaceable. If you quit, they will find another person to do your job. If you do your job poorly, they’ll fire you. If business becomes slow, they’ll lay you off. The company has very little, if any, loyalty to you as an individual. Yet many of us have great loyalty to our work. We work long hours, often burning the midnight oil, in the hopes of getting caught up or being recognized for a promotion.

Conversely, at home, no one else can fill your shoes. You are the only husband or wife that your spouse has. Only you can be the mother or father to your kids. No one else can fill your role. And your family has nearly unlimited loyalty to you.

Yet when push comes to shove, many of us choose to cheat our family rather than work. We choose to devote extra time to the entity that has zero loyalty to us while robbing those that have nearly unlimited loyalty to us. We focus on areas where we are replaceable at the expense of areas where we’re irreplaceable. We choose to spend our time doing things that will be obsolete in five short years while cheating in areas where our impact may be felt for a lifetime or even longer.

Why? And what could we, should we do about it?

Making A Conscious Choice

In Choosing To Cheat, Stanley tackles this problem. He doesn’t pretend to have easy answers. But he does call your attention to the problem and offer some creative ways to approach your work and home life. I definitely learned a lot from the book.

It’s a short, easy read. You can easily finish it in one sitting or on a short flight. But it can be life changing if read with an openness and taken to heart. I have a good friend who would say that it literally helped to saved his marriage.

So, if you’re cheating, are you choosing wisely?

The post I’m Choosing To Cheat appeared first on The SERO Group.

Balancing work and home life is nothing new; we’ve had this challenge for a long time. But in recent months when so many companies are streamlining operations and asking their employees to do more with less, the challenge has gotten noticeably more difficult. I recently interviewed someone who had struggled with this in a mighty way; he’d worked more weekends than not during the past twelve months and had reached a point of burn out.

In addition to the direct work requirements of our jobs, there are also the quasi-work activities of blogging, attending user group meetings, learning new technologies, and volunteering in the community. All of these are good activities, but they take time. And that time has to come from some where.

Priorities

In Cheaper by the Dozen, Steve Martin’s character, Coach Tom Baker, faces this dilemma when his boss, Shake McGuire, demands more time from the Coach despite the pressures at home. Shake is surprised when Tom Baker resigns from his dream job. Tom Baker summarizes his rationale very succinctly. ”If I screw up raising my kids. nothing I achieve will matter much.”

Priorities matter. Balancing work and home matters.

So how can we better balance our work life and home life? I suspect you already know the answer to that question. It’s the doing of the answer that’s difficult.

Tips For Balancing

• Realize That You’ll Never Get Everything Done. I’m a doer. I like checking items off a to-do list. But I’ve learned that my to-do list will never reach zero. There will always be something else to do. I will not be able to finish everything before I go home for the day. Once I made peace with that, some of the self-imposed stress that accompanies open items and drives me stay late at work begins to melt away.
• Place Your Family Events On The Calendar. I learned a long time ago that if an event is not on my calender, it will not happen. I’m too busy to remember everything that is important to me. So I put family events on my calendar. Boy Scout events? On the calendar. My daughter’s piano recital? On the calendar. You can mark them private if you wish, but staking the claim on the calendar will prevent others from scheduling meetings during important family events.
• Learn To Say “No”. This is one of my biggest challenges. I want to help with each request that comes to me. And considered in isolation, it’s easy to think that it’ll only take a small amount of time. But all of those little items add up. Learning to say No at work, at home, and at volunteer events will help to add some much needed margin to your life.
• Make Up Your Mind Ahead Of Time. As Socrates once said “the life which is unexamined is not worth living.” Take the time to know what is important to you before you are put in a situation that challenges you. If I’m asked to attend a SQLSaturday when I have a family commitment, I won’t go. Family is important to me.
• Time Box Your Activities. I can write a magazine article in four hours or it can take four days. It all depends on how much time I allow. Parkinson’s Law states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Perfectionists are really susceptible to Parkinson’s Law. Time boxing is the practice of allocating a set amount of time for an activity. When you reach the end of the time, you’re done. This prevents you from revising and revising again and wasting time with only marginal gains in the output (aka the Law of Diminishing Returns).

Beware Of Too Many Good Things.

The challenge in putting these ideas into practice is that most of the time, the things that we are doing are good things. Speaking at conferences, staying late to go the extra mile for a client, teaching a Sunday School Class, leading a Boy Scout troop, are all good things. And all have their place. But too many of them too often can lead to problems.

The post Balancing Work and Life appeared first on The SERO Group.

One of the hardest lessons to learn and put into practice is that of Real Cost versus Opportunity Cost. Let’s consider an example.

Real Cost

Real Cost is straightforward. If the water pipes in my house freeze and burst due to the cold weather, I can fix the leak myself or I can call a professional plumber. Those are my options. Sure, I could do without running water, but I’m fond of modern conveniences. So, let’s say I want to fix the leak.

Which is the better option – fixing the leak myself or hiring a professional? Assuming I have the know-how, fixing the leak myself sounds less expensive. In terms of Real Cost it is.

When I repair the bursted pipes myself, my only outlay is for the supplies required to stop the water from squirting out. I’ll need to run down to the hardware store to buy some replacement pipe and perhaps a couple of shiny new tools. That’s the extent of my Real Costs. Then I can roll up my sleeves and dive into the repairs.

If I call a plumber to come to my house and do the job for me, I don’t have to go to the hardware store. I don’t have to buy the materials myself. And I don’t have to find and fix the leak. But I do have to pay him to do these things for me. I have to pay for his time plus the materials he uses to remedy the problem.

So, calling a professional costs me time and materials whereas doing it myself costs only materials.

But that’s not really a complete picture. There’s an Opportunity Cost associated with the project.

Opportunity Cost

If I spend three hours repairing the ruptured pipes, that’s three hours that I’m not doing something else like working for my clients or spending time with my family. The things that I give up by not choosing them are the Opportunity Costs.

There are Opportunity Costs associated with every decision you make. Choosing one thing, by definition, will come at the expense of another.

In this case, the Opportunity Cost of fixing the burst pipes is the time I spend doing the work myself. A professional plumber can probably do the job in half that time. So from an economic perspective, I’m spending time doing something that I’m only marginally skilled at instead of focusing on areas where I’m more skilled. That’s underutilizing my effectiveness.

So in effect, I am paying for time and materials even when I do the job myself. I’m paying with my time rather than buying the plumber’s time. So the question becomes: how much is my time worth to me?

Unless the plumber charges twice my hourly rate or I don’t actually have the client work to do instead of fixing the broken pipes, it actually costs me less to pay someone else to do the job.

Applying The Calculation To Business

Real Costs versus Opportunity Costs apply to business as well. For example, should I outsource part of a project to another consultant?

Let’s say I’m a database consultant and I’m somewhat skilled in application development. I can do the application development work, but my area of expertise is in the database. Spending time developing the front end application is not a good use of my time. Someone else can do it better and faster than me. I should focus on the things that I do well.

The same goes for bookkeeping, web site development, and making reservations.

The concept also applies to managers and their team. If a manager does something that he could have delegated to a team member, it’s actually costing the organization. He could have delegated the task and had someone else do it, allowing him to focus on the things that only he can do.

There’s More To The Story

We must remember, however, that not all decisions are solely based on finances. Spending time with my family, working on the fence in the pasture, and volunteering as a Scout Leader all have Opportunity Costs associated with them. Despite being intangible, the results are well worth it. I’m not going to outsource some things.

The post Real Cost vs Opportunity Cost appeared first on The SERO Group.

Balancing work and home life is nothing new; we’ve had this challenge for a long time. But in recent months when so many companies are streamlining operations and asking their employees to do more with less, the challenge has gotten noticeably more difficult. I recently interviewed someone who had struggled with this in a mighty way; he’d worked more weekends than not during the past twelve months and had reached a point of burn out.

In addition to the direct work requirements of our jobs, there are also the quasi-work activities of blogging, attending user group meetings, learning new technologies, and volunteering in the community. All of these are good activities, but they take time. And that time has to come from some where.

Priorities

In Cheaper by the Dozen, Steve Martin’s character, Coach Tom Baker, faces this dilemma when his boss, Shake McGuire, demands more time from the Coach despite the pressures at home. Shake is surprised when Tom Baker resigns from his dream job. Tom Baker summarizes his rationale very succinctly. ”If I screw up raising my kids. nothing I achieve will matter much.”

Priorities matter. Balancing work and home matters.

So how can we better balance our work life and home life? I suspect you already know the answer to that question. It’s the doing of the answer that’s difficult.

Tips For Balancing

• Realize That You’ll Never Get Everything Done. I’m a doer. I like checking items off a to-do list. But I’ve learned that my to-do list will never reach zero. There will always be something else to do. I will not be able to finish everything before I go home for the day. Once I made peace with that, some of the self-imposed stress that accompanies open items and drives me stay late at work begins to melt away.
• Place Your Family Events On The Calendar. I learned a long time ago that if an event is not on my calender, it will not happen. I’m too busy to remember everything that is important to me. So I put family events on my calendar. Boy Scout events? On the calendar. My daughter’s piano recital? On the calendar. You can mark them private if you wish, but staking the claim on the calendar will prevent others from scheduling meetings during important family events.
• Learn To Say “No”. This is one of my biggest challenges. I want to help with each request that comes to me. And considered in isolation, it’s easy to think that it’ll only take a small amount of time. But all of those little items add up. Learning to say No at work, at home, and at volunteer events will help to add some much needed margin to your life.
• Make Up Your Mind Ahead Of Time. As Socrates once said “the life which is unexamined is not worth living.” Take the time to know what is important to you before you are put in a situation that challenges you. If I’m asked to attend a SQLSaturday when I have a family commitment, I won’t go. Family is important to me.
• Time Box Your Activities. I can write a magazine article in four hours or it can take four days. It all depends on how much time I allow. Parkinson’s Law states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Perfectionists are really susceptible to Parkinson’s Law. Time boxing is the practice of allocating a set amount of time for an activity. When you reach the end of the time, you’re done. This prevents you from revising and revising again and wasting time with only marginal gains in the output (aka the Law of Diminishing Returns).

Beware Of Too Many Good Things

The challenge in putting these ideas into practice is that most of the time, the things that we are doing are good things. Speaking at conferences, staying late to go the extra mile for a client, teaching a Sunday School Class, leading a Boy Scout troop, are all good things. And all have their place. But too many of them too often can lead to problems.

The post Balancing Work and Life appeared first on The SERO Group.

Think about your responsibilities at work for a minute. How many do you have? Can you even name them all?

As technical professionals, we have a myriad of responsibilities This is especially true in today’s economy when so many of us are being asked to do more with less. It’s easy to get caught up in our daily tasks and projects. We must improve the response time of a report and gently slap the hand of the guy who designed it so inefficiently. We must crank out more code to meet an arbitrary deadline promised by a salesman.

It’s easy to lose heart and to think of ourselves as just another cog in the underbelly of a faceless, heartless organization.

At least one-third of each business day is spent at work. For some if us, it’s much more than that. When we are discontented with our jobs, it affects the other areas of our lives. That’s why it’s important to keep a healthy perspective on life.

The Power of Perspective

I’m reminded of the story a man who was waking down the street in old England many years ago when he happened upon a construction site. As he approached, he saw a laborer. The man stopped and asked the laborer what he was doing. The laborer gave a sneering look and replied “I’m laying bricks. What does it look like I’m doing?” and continued about the business of laying bricks.

A few minutes later, the man came to another laborer who was wielding a trowel and slathering mortar onto a granite block. The man asked the second laborer what he was doing. “I’m raising this wall.” replied the laborer as he continued working.

Another few minutes passed and the man came to a third laborer with trowel in hand. The man asked the laborer the same question posed to the first two laborers “What are you doing?” The laborer looked at the man and replied “I’m building a magnificent and grand Cathedral where generations of believers will be able to come to worship God Almighty.”

That’s the difference perspective can make. All three laborers were doing the same thing from an outsiders vantage point, yet each viewed their activities differently.

What Are You Doing?

So, let me ask you: what are you are doing? Are you creating maintenance plans? Or are you ensuring the medical staff have the information they need to help treat patients effectively? Are you going through your daily check list on the servers? Or are you working on something much more important, much bigger than yourself?

How is your perspective?

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