Productivity, Relying on Technology & Redundancy
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Your computer crashes. Information technology won't start up again. What do you do? Goose egg productive. The morning's wasted, the technician comes and tells yous that you need a new hard drive, and your afternoon'southward gone likewise while you lot go shopping for a new one.
In that location are a million variations of this scenario. Nosotros put ourselves in a precarious position when we rely totally and completely on technology to maintain our productivity systems and execute the tasks we fix for ourselves with them. Technology gives personal productivity steroids; everything'due south faster. Most of us can type faster than we write and using e-mail as a grade of day-to-day communication allows united states of america to drastically reduce the number of confusing conversations and phone calls we receive each day. And then we learn to rely on technology, then much and so that when it fails — and it does — nosotros tin be left speechless when asked the old question, what's the next action?
Two years agone I was in such a position. My task management system was a text file stored locally on my computer. A computer that failed with agonizing regularity. It wouldn't accept mattered if I stored my task management organisation in a Google Dr.; at the time I didn't take another reckoner, nor an iPhone, and anyway, what if Google Docs went down?
We need to learn to rely less on technology. And I don't mean we should ditch our computers as the hub of our productivity organisation, but we demand redundancy. Redundancy for the system, and redundancy for the state of affairs.
Redundancy for the System
Redundant systems are systems that ensure that a problem with whatever single component does not crusade problems for other components or the system as a whole. This is usually done by doubling upwards on components; either the same component in a dissimilar place (such as off-site backups), or simply the same component in a different medium that is unrelated to the first.
So you could keep copies of your task list on two computers and ensure they're always up to engagement in case i of them goes downwardly. You lot could depend on Time Machine (if you're on a Mac) to provide this sort of back-up for you, or keep a copy in Gmail or Google Docs, or all-time yet (if not somewhat obsessive), all of the above. Or, you could write the list downwards on paper and email a copy of your computer's list to your telephone.
When it comes to computer-based systems, synchronization between multiple devices is a good first. But it's likewise a good idea to keep a copy that doesn't rely on electrons. Your power could become out for hours (the same day y'all forgot to accuse your laptop and phone the dark before). Anything can happen with these solutions, whereas if you've written or printed things out, the system is a lot less fickle. Someone you live with could accidentally throw your job list out or your house could burn down (in which case the terminal thing on your mind will exist whether your task list is okay) but it's much less likely you'll lose access to both your online and offline copies at once.
Redundancy for the Situation
The other trouble with relying on engineering too much has to do with execution. Even if y'all've got your task list on a piece of paper in one case the power goes off, what practice you do? Nothing, if you haven't planned for it. Ane of the excellent tools that many productivity systems provide are some sort of variation of GTD's Contexts, and they're useful in exactly this sort of situation (among others).
In near whatever project, there'southward ordinarily some task that tin can be done without the help of a calculator — fifty-fifty if using a reckoner would, nether normal circumstances, be the best fashion to go virtually it. The idea is that if y'all've got your contexts gear up upwardly properly, when you don't have access to a estimator, you use a context gear up for offline piece of work. No Internet connection, switch out of your @internet context and into something else. If y'all've got a fair bit that can exist done offline, just make an @offline context and switch to it when you need information technology. Y'all tin use multiple contexts on a single chore, as well. If your work should be done on a computer merely can be washed without one, you could attach an additional @offline or @nopower context that works every bit a secondary to the task's usual context.
It's by and large a matter of personal taste every bit to how yous set your arrangement upwards to adapt to unexpected changes, only the bottom line is that you lot should plan ahead for these situations and exist gear up to go with a list of things that tin be washed in the concurrently.
Contexts is near having a productivity arrangement to include and suit the environment you are in and the tools you have available. Consider technological failure of any kind as simply another environment. Planning alee for something to get wrong isn't being pedantic, it's smart, and information technology's even got a proper name in the public relations world: crisis management. Any good public relations squad will have a plan in identify for a crisis so that if anything happens, they can move straight into action. In that location's no reason you tin't practise this with personal productivity.
It's much easier for united states than it is for PR guys; during your weekly review, while you prepare new tasks, just scan through your list, and slap a context on anything that can be done offline. Easy — takes a infinitesimal or two longer than your weekly review usually does. You could go weeks or months without using it, only information technology'll exist well worth it when the fourth dimension for technical failure comes. Instead of having your sense of the day's work set off class past this "disaster" and sitting in that location with a confused expression, you lot'll be back up and running in no fourth dimension. That's what redundant systems are all about.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/productivity-relying-on-technology-redundancy.html
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