On the way to the home office after an appointment his morning I was listening to the great photography podcast, Tips from the Top Floor and the two people in it were talking about how they loved to teach other people. The host loved to teach photography and his guest for the day was a chef who also expressed his love for teaching other’s to cook. That got me to thinking that teaching is a way of backing up our information that we often don’t think about and I thought of other ways we can “do backups” other than copying computer files to another locations.

1.) Teaching - Pass along what you know to others who are passionate about learning
2.) Writing - I’ve discovered the act of writing not only preserves what I know but I have also discovered that when I start writing I also start recovering memories I thought I had lost. Amazing how that happens. A good example of this is my Camp Old Indian blog when I have worked at remembering  the times I spent working at a summer camp during the 1980’s
3.) Selling - What good is your product or service if it is not in other hands? A product or service that is not used risks being forgotten and dying away.
4.) “hard” copies - I used to make fun of office workers who would print off a copy of every file they created on the computer and while that can be overkill it is a good idea to have written records of things like activation codes , passwords and other account information. Stored away in a locked a secure place of course.
5.) Building relationships - No one is an island. Trusted friends and family can support and save your business in unique ways.
6.) Practice skills - Ever heard the old saying, “If you don’t use it you lose it?”
7.) Have a home office - It’s a quaint concept to leave work at the office but in the age of the Internet and cell phones it’s almost impossible to leave, at least physically or connected but if disaster or power failure were to strike you are out of pocket and maybe even out of business!
If you are a business owner, plan on keeping that home office for all kinds of backup reasons from computer files to office equipment. Not to mention current tax laws.

What other ways can you suggest to back up your life, work and business other than the obvious use of the term?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Innovation, Security, Tips, blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.