Do any of your New Year’s resolutions include the goal to become a more productive SAS user?

Whether you’re building models or reports using SAS or you’re using SAS to effectively manage your data, you likely have a goal to be as productive as possible with your SAS usage in 2016.

Related, sometimes to move forward, you need to look back.

You may have missed it, but, back in 2013, one of my SAS colleagues, Wendy McHenry, drafted a
SAS Users blog entirely devoted to the topic of leveraging SAS functionality for scheduling to save time and increase productivity.

Since then, many users have read Wendy's “Four ways to schedule SAS tasks” post on scheduling with SAS, which addresses:

• Scheduling SAS code in batch;
• Scheduling SAS process flows and projects in SAS Enterprise Guide;
• Scheduling jobs with SAS Management Console; and
• Scheduling in a grid environment with the Platform Suite for SAS.

Though the post was originally drafted in 2013, all of the Wendy’s tips still apply, so, if you haven’t already read it, check it out to see if you can apply some of the scheduling tips that Wendy shares to save time in 2016.

Besides using the scheduling functionality of SAS, there’s another way that you can increase your productivity as a SAS user in 2016, but, it’s going to require you to look ahead.

The first quarter SAS training schedule includes new courses in locations worldwide that will challenge you and help build your SAS skills set.  If you want to increase your productivity as a SAS user, take the time now to plan ahead and schedule the training time you need.

To achieve success with SAS in 2016, my simple advice to you is “plan, plan, plan,” and, “schedule, schedule, schedule.”