productivity

Working with the Best Developers

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Developers, stop reading this now. This post isn’t for you. This post is for the sysadmins and database admins, the people who have to keep the digital pipes unclogged. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg had a brilliant interview at the Lean Startup Conference. It’s chock full of good stuff and you should totally watch the whole thing, but this one-minute exchange is one of my favorites: Interviewer: “So you mentioned accountability and I was curious about that… Almost all the metrics [you monitor] were about how customers use the site, but not how employees are working, and I wondered if there…
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My Favorite Consulting Startup Resources

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A friend of mine was asking for advice about starting up a consulting company, and I realized I’ve got a lot of good links piled away. Here’s some of my favorites: Me and my wonderful cofounders Designing the Business So You Want to Be a Consultant – explains the different kinds of consultants, how they manage money, how to build customer relationships, and more. Your Crappy Little Services Business – there’s nothing wrong with building a consulting company instead of an aggressively growth-focused dot-com startup. The Hacking Business Model – we wanted to run a really different consulting company, and we wrote up…
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What In My Laptop Bag – Fall 2013 Edition

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Clockwise from left, starting with the bag: What’s In My Laptop Bag Cote & Ciel Isar Rucksack – black melange, medium size for 13″ to 15″ laptops. It’s like a hobo bag for men – thin when you don’t need to carry much, but can balloon out to huge sizes to carry all kinds of stuff. Easily handles a couple of changes of clothes in addition to my laptop, iPad, and everything you see here. Review by Carryology. 40 Blinks Sleep Mask – the blue bra-looking thing is to be worn on your face during long flights. Yep, on your…
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State of the Office 2013

How I Cleaned Up My Desk Cabling

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My idea of the perfect desk would be something straight out of the Apple store – bare tables with no visible wiring.  Back here in reality, though, I’ve got monitor cabling, device chargers, microphone and speaker cabling, etc, etc.  Every year or two, I take a shot at making a really clean, minimalist desk, and here’s how it turned out this weekend: State of the Office 2013 It’s hard to really appreciate it until you see it from behind: Back of the Desk Yes, that’s Ernie’s ears peeking out from her black chair.  That used to be my chair, but…
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How Consultants Spend Their Week

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I’ve had a series of strange jobs.  From 2005-2008, I was a jack-of-all-trades at a $7b distribution company – doing SQL Server, VMware, and storage work.  I functioned kind of as an internal consultant.  From 2008-2010, I worked for Quest Software as a SQL Server expert/evangelist.  Today, I’m a SQL Server consultant working for a company I co-founded. So what do I do, really?  Let’s look at a random week’s schedule when I’m at home: Monday – “free” day – I wake up, walk the dog, brew the coffee, and get into the home office by 7am.  My peak thinking…
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My 6 Rules for Incredible Time Management

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I’m always surprised when people say, “I don’t know how you do all that stuff.”  I feel like I hardly do any work at all, honestly – I think I’m the least hard working person of anybody I know.  I just follow six simple rules: Even my mirror self-portraits are incredible. And by that I mean lacking credibility. Rule #1: Decide that you want to be incredible.  If you’re okay with doing an okay job, then you don’t need any time management.  But if you want to have incredible results, you’re going to have to do incredible work.  That doesn’t…
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My Home Office Setup – 2012

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I’m running out of excuses to produce bad T-SQL: My Home Office Setup We just finished moving up the street in downtown Chicago, and I’ve finally made it: I’ve got the proverbial corner office.  The view north up Michigan Avenue: Heading North That’s Millennium Park, home of the Bean, Buckingham Fountain, and lots of festivals. On the left side, the Art Institute and the Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion finish up the park just short of a line of skyscrapers including the Microsoft offices where our local user group meets.  The view east toward Lake Michigan: Beyond My Monitor When I look…
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Hi. I’m Brent.

That's me, Brent.

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm on an epic life quest to have fun and make a difference.

I co-founded Brent Ozar Unlimited to help make your SQL Server go faster. I also maintain sp_Blitz® and the open source First Responder Kit repo.

My current car collection includes a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS, a 1964 Porsche 356, a 1971 VW Type 3 Squareback, and more.

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