Someone made a comment about not checking their bank balance super closely. And someone else said that wasn't necessarily a sign of a good DBA, them not being detail oriented enough. I don't think that you can necessarily relate a person's performance outside of work to that in it. After all, there are plenty of people that are very successful in business, but don't do so well in social or personal relationships.
Do you think it matters? I don't. One of the great strengths of humans is our ability to compartmentalize things. We can keep a great separation in many ways between different aspects of our lives.
However we also often have trouble separating business from personal relationships when they overlap. I know I am very careful about doing business with friends for this reason. I like the compartmentalization.
I'm productive at work. I work all the time, 7 days a week, morning until night, but not constantly. I work in 1, 2, or 3 hour increments and I may have 3, 4 or 5 of them during the day. Yesterday I was up at 6, working until 6:30 (bus #1 drop off), then back at work by 7:30 (breakfast and bus #2 drop off), working until 9:30 (horse feeding), working from 10-11, off to lunch, back at 12:30, working until 3:30 (bus pickup), worked from 4-5, gone and back working from 9-10:30 or so at night.
However I'm definitely less focused and productive at home. I let things go, partially because of a lack of pressure to finish them, I'm less organized, and I don't worry about details as much as at work. Mostly because I can cut myself the slack and deal with the costs or consequences of doing so. At work I know people are depending on my to get things done, so I pay more attention.
Let us know what you think and if you compartmentalize like I do. Do you hold it against anyone in an interview? Does behavior outside of work necessarily predict performance inside it?
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
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