Sometimes a short break can do wonders, but sometimes you just need more.

I remember working on an update team for a large system. Our team was spread across our state and I was the only DBA. There were multiple large databases in excess of 500 GB and these were mirrored to that application's SQL DR server. I had stopped mirroring on all of the databases and created database snapshots prior to the upgrade. The upgrade failed and I had to restore from the snapshots.

It was already after 3:30 AM and I had been up since 6 AM the previous day. I recognized that I was too tired to be effective and might actually become a liability to the process. My sight was failing and I had a difficult time reading my display. (Being diabetic does not help either.)

I used the "tag team" approach. I contacted one of the other two DBAs, explained the situation and he was able to finish things up.

Do I wish I could have handled the entire operation myself? Yes. But there was a high probability that I would have made a mistake. In this case I was lucky enough that a team member was able to jump in and assist.