Digital Minimalism, Pt. 2

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, but right now Mila is not feeling very lucky.

Not due to any lack of effort on her part: she’s a feisty CEO with nine employees and dozens of clients for whom she works diligently every day.

But when a spreadsheet with all of the new leads from last quarter disappeared, she had no escape plan. It cost her thousands and damaged her reputation amongst her peers. Oh and her name isn’t Mila.

And that’s the end.

That would be a pretty lame story, except it’s real, so it’s extra painful. It happens all the time, and the best thing most people do is dust themselves off and hope that it doesn’t happen again. That’s not a solution.

Here’s the scenario:

The Prospects sheet was sitting in it’s folder in Google drive, but Tim decided to save it to his desktop and work on it while on vacation. The versions didn’t line up, and when he brought it back, the original was gone.

Without a synchronized database across all computers, the file was lost.

Without an automated cloud backup, the file was lost.

Without local hard disk backups, the file was lost.

Without even knowing, the file was lost.

A dangerous proposition has emerged in the last few years - we’ve placed an exorbitant and unwarranted amount of trust in “The Cloud,” assuming that everything we do will be safe, protected, and available. Yet systems change daily, and while there will always be new and convenient ways to manage data, every individual and small business should have a robust system to fully protect and duplicate their data.

If you’re not sure how to do that, ask me. I can organize your digital life and make things simple in the process. It’s called The Astro Lab.