Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [86]
What was the outcome of my planning? It turned out great—thanks to adjustments that I made to my original idea. I built my own setup using an old bookcase, rearranged the room to better accommodate the treadmill, and made it easy to take my laptop elsewhere for seated work when I want. I wish that I kept some statistics so I could tell you the average miles per hour at which I wrote this book!
If you’re lucky, thinking through scenarios at work can sometimes uncover new best practices, which will allow you to eliminate or reduce the number of attendees needed at a recurring meeting. Even if you still need to have meetings there are way to make them less of a hassle for everyone involved. In the invitation, include the goal(s) of the session, any necessary brief introduction to the discussion, and an agenda. When people walk in the door, prime them to be effective and succinct. Don’t reward the inconsiderate by starting over or backing up unless absolutely necessary; people will learn that you mean business and don’t intend to waste their time. If you do this, your meetings will run faster and better.
A timely note to your future self
Some other things besides badly run meetings are a tedious pain in the butt. For instance, you run out of prescription allergy medicine and have to wait in line to renew it, instead of doing it online (or by mail), because you threw away the box with the prescription number. Not having a magic number, which is the key to resolving a problem, can make a chore seem more than twice as big and can delay you for days. You can avoid this kind of situation by planning.
In your contacts on your phone, or in an easily looked-up message to yourself in a web-based email program like Gmail, note numbers that would save you a ton of time to have later: prescription numbers; ink cartridge model number for your printer (or other details you frequently need in order to complete an errand); rental or homeowners insurance account number; the phone number of an out-of-area friend or relation, who could help you in case of a natural disaster; your sizes and measurements, plus those for whom you often buy clothes; membership numbers because, if they're in your phone, you don't have to carry all the dang cards with you all the time; and your landlord and neighbor's phone numbers.
Because of identity theft risks, you shouldn’t list your social security number and credit card numbers (though the contact numbers for lost cards are useful). Having this available to you from anywhere, online, can avoid a world of hassle in a crisis. For the same reason, you may also want to put this information on a thumb drive and keep it in your emergency kit.
Back it up
Losing all your computer data is a really sucky inconvenience—and you will face that risk sooner or later. As technology journalist and civil liberties activist Danny O’Brien put it, “Power users trust software as far as they have thrown their computers in the past.”
No more excuses! Do a backup today and create a plan for regular backups in the future. The most convenient approach is an overall solution for your whole system, such as Time Machine on the Mac. At the least, make copies of important things, such as your writing, your photos, your address book, and the one file that would most make you cry if lost.
Store the copies away from your home, either online or otherwise. Remember that in addition to physical media under your control (external drives, CDs, DVDs, second computers), you may also have some space for things on a hosted service. For example, if you own your own domain and have hard drive space on a server as part of the hosting of your website, you could store some backup files there, carefully putting them in a nonpublic folder. Remember, though, that if that service goes out of business, the backup could be lost to you and, if it gets hacked, personal data could be stolen. Be selective about how you use these resources. It's advisable to make a big backup periodically and store it in two separate locations away