Wow! Work

I’ve been in a sysadmin mood lately. I want our server to be a model of efficiency and automation. I want us to be able to recover instantly in case of disaster. I want to describe our setup to other people and hear them reply, “Wow.”

Partly, this is because I’ve been re-reading Tom Peters’ Brand You 50 at work, a few chapters at a time. Here’s one of his suggestions (paraphrased):

1. List all your projects at work (a project is just work with a specific goal).
2. Ask yourself—and others—what it would take to make people gasp in amazement and delight when they hear about each project.
3. For each project, list ten ways you could make it more of a “Wow!” project.
4. Pick a couple.
5. Do them.

I agree, which is why I just set up a cron job that backs up all web files changed in the last 24 hours.

Hey. You’re working on stuff. What would it take to turn that stuff into “WOW!” work? Why not do some of it?