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Kendra’s Top 3 Tips for Working Remotely

Today we have a guest editorial from Kendra Little because she has amazing things to say and Steve is traveling today for the Redgate Summit.

As concerns about COVID-19 spread, I’ve seen lots of folks online sharing their tips for working remotely. While I’ve recently moved to the UK and have begun working regularly from the Redgate office in Cambridge, prior to this I worked remotely in the United States for around 10 years. Trial and error led me to develop three important habits which I recommend for successful remote workers.

Use a webcam in meetings whenever you possibly can

I know, I know: most of us database types don’t love the idea of turning on a webcam. In fact, we often feel the urge to stay hidden during calls.

However, I’ve found that remote meetings work dramatically better when as many people in the meeting as possible use webcams. This isn’t about looking pretty, it’s about helping people feel they are being listened to, and about helping people pick up nuance about what you are saying. I also find that when I have a webcam on, I am far less likely to multi-task and I tend to focus more on the meeting.

I recommend asking your employer if they will reimburse you for a reasonably priced USB webcam for joining meetings remotely, if you are open to using one. The built-in webcam on a laptop usually doesn’t make for the best experience due to poor camera quality and awkward camera positioning.

Don’t work out of Slack/Teams or your Inbox; check them regularly instead

When you change your work environment, it’s easy to spend all your time staring into a team chat window or your email inbox. This becomes your way to be connected to people, and the next thing you know you’re in a mode of constant response to things as soon as they come in.

Then, after a few hours, you’re exhausted and you aren’t even sure what you’ve accomplished.

Remote work is much more productive for me if I regularly close out my email and chat windows to focus on a task, and re-open them periodically to update status and check in on what my team is doing. If I need to be reachable for a critical task or project, I’ll look at alerts on my phone, but otherwise I try to leave it be for 30 minute periods. I also find that some of those issues which creep up in email may be solved by someone else if they sit for a few minutes.

Use a timer if you need help breaking up your work day

For some of us, it’s easy to accidentally over-work if we are working from home. Sure, I took a break during lunch to watch a Netflix show for half an hour, but … did I actually get up from my desk at all in the afternoon? It’s easy to end up dehydrated with a bad neck ache at the end of the day.

When working remotely, I use different tools to make sure I get up throughout the day: sometimes I use calendar entries, sometimes I use a free Pomodoro app, sometimes I use a time-tracking tool like Toggl (their free tier is enough for me).

Want to read more about work practices in light of COVID-19? Our team has written a few posts on the Redgate blog recently with our thoughts on this topic:

Kendra.Little

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

 
 Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Disaster Recovery and High Availability Solutions in SQL Server

Smit Dagli from SQLServerCentral

Learn about disaster recovery and high availability options in SQL Server with details on the tradeoffs you make when choosing from Availability Groups, Log Shipping, Database Mirroring, and Replication.

External Article

Finding Sister Locations to Help Each Other: Answers & Discussion

Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Blog

This week’s query exercise asked you to find two kinds of locations in the Stack Overflow database.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How Do You Decide What to Learn?

hellosqlkitty from SQLKitty

There are so many choices and so little time. How do you go about deciding what to learn? I have to delicately balance everything I think I want to...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - When was my SQL Server Database Last Accessed?

david.fowler 42596 from SQL Undercover

Your boss walks up to you one morning and says, “Hey, I wanna list of all of our databases and when they were last accessed”. If you’ve got some...

The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

In this newly updated and expanded edition of the bestselling The Phoenix Project, co-author Gene Kim includes a new afterword and a deeper delve into the Three Ways as described in The DevOps Handbook.

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Express In-Memory OLTP

Can I create In-Memory OLTP tables in SQL Server Express?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

 Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Default Objects in Clones

On SQL Server 2022, I do this:

USE model
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.DBALog
(logdate DATETIME2(3), logmsg VARCHAR(2000))
GO

I then create a new database:

CREATE DATABASE INVENTORY
GO

I install a new database application in here with multiple tables, views, etc. I do not run any queries.

I then decide to run this code:

DBCC CLONEDATABASE(INVENTORY, Inventory_clone);
GO

What happens?

Answer: The clone is not created and a duplicate key row error is returned

Explanation: If there are user created objects in model that are also in the source database, the clone cannot be created. Ref: DBCC Clonedatabase - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/database-console-commands/dbcc-clonedatabase-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


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SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
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Development - SQL Server 2014
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SQL Server 2019 - Administration
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SQL Server 2019 - Development
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Help with reading from JSON array - Hi all, I am trying to read the following JSON code in SQL Server: declare @json nvarchar(max) set @json = ' { "WorkId":121, "Code":"UK_AAT", "UpdateAttributes": { "TriggerDateMapping": { "3N":"N/A", "10N": "N/A" }, "OverrideRules": [ {"Busket Rule":"A1", "Exit_Window": 15, "Strategy": "STE Triggered", "Start_Date": "Month 2" }, {"Busket Rule":"C2", "Exit_Window": 44, "Strategy": "STE", "Start_Date": "Month 2" }, […]
test sql servers - Hi we run 2019 standard.  I'm torn between asking my dept head for 3 test sql servers for use by everybody so that we can test 3 projects at once vs enough horsepower on my local to run 3 instances.   I'm leaning toward one that is shared and whatever it takes to run 3 instances […]
error using #temp tables - Hi I am getting this error message when I try to re-use a temp table.  The code is a bit long so I won't post it here.  Here is a template on how the temp tables are being used.  What am I doing wrong? Code: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TEMP1 DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TEMP2 […]
SQL Azure - Administration
Database Snapshot Alternative in SQL MI - Database snapshots are not supported in SQL Managed Instance, Is there a workaround for Database snapshot feature. Restore from point in time backups will take a lot of time for us. I want to create a readonly copy of a database from a specific point, how can this be achieved in SQL MI?
Analysis Services
Dates are rendered in multiple formats in Excel against Cube - We upgraded a  SQL2014 environment to a sql2016 one recently with a customer.  This customer still uses the traditional SSAS Multidimensional cubes. After the upgrade the dates no longer present themselves in the singular same format within Excel reports. A value of  14 march 2024 is represented as  '2024-03-14'  correctly , but  4 march 2024 […]
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
Post Upgrade Access issues - Databases in 120 Compatibility and Read_Only Status - I recently did an in place upgrade from 2014 to 2022, and couldn't connect to any of the databases that were in Read_Only state AND still in 120 compatibility mode, with the following error: "Cannot open database 'DBName' version 782. Upgrade the database to the latest version." After setting all the databases to 160 mode […]
SQL2022 CU12 Question - Hi. I installed SQL2022 CU12 and in the notes it says:   2937584 Fixes an issue in which the sp_server_diagnostics stored procedure doesn't respond to the Always On availability group (AG) resource DLL within the HealthCheckTimeout when the I/O takes a long time, which causes unnecessary restart and failover. For example, when the sp_server_diagnostics stored procedure is waiting for the PREEMPTIVE_OS_GETFINALFILEPATHBYHANDLE wait type. […]
 

 

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