I clicked on something bad yesterday.

One minute I was happily surfing along. Copying and pasting links into an email.

Then all of a sudden:

BOOM! Everything gone.

OK. It wasn’t quite so sudden or dramatic. A brief glimpse of the ominous java-coffee-mug-o-death. Then just like in a real accident, everything seemed to slow down. (Especially my computer.)

My quick start buttons disappeared from the lower left hand side of my screen. My desktop junk icons turned transparent. A screen appeared warning me about fatal hard drive errors.

I pulled out techie-trick-number-one and re-booted. I tried to remain optimistic that this was just a glitch…and everything would be fine. But deep down I knew it wouldn’t be.

And it wasn’t.

Windows reappeared. I logged on. And everything was gone.

No programs. No files. No bookmarks.

(Actually that’s not entirely true. The malware that had wiped out my system was still there – redirecting my Google searches to a non-existent domain. Self defense, I suppose…seems I was searching for a way to get rid of it.)

Backups? We don’t need no stinkin’ backups

(I just alluded to a movie I’ve never seen. I think it’s a western. I don’t even like westerns.)

If you’re expecting me to announce that all is fine because I backed up everything (not once, not twice….but three times just to be safe) – and to end this post with an admonition to back up your files…surprise!

I had no backups. Zero.

It’s all gone.

• All my downloaded information products (free and paid for)
• Three (or is it four?) incomplete e-books I was writing
• My business plans and ideas
• Three years of daily journals
• Umpteen unpublished blog post drafts
• The software I wrote
• All my emails, contacts and calendar
• All the speeches, workshops and presentations I’ve developed (including the presentation I gave yesterday morning)

And yes, it’s all gone permanently. I reformatted my computer this morning.

Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

This is not the first time I’ve lost data. I’ve had computers since the early 1980s. I’ve never backed up.

I’ve accidentally erased files. I’ve had drives fail. I’ve had computers break (once even with smoke!)

And every time…no one died, life moved on…and all that stuff I had on the computer?

I didn’t miss it at all.

(One time I had a drive fail. It wouldn’t boot, but the data was still accessible. I kept it on a shelf in my office…in case I ever needed anything from it. It sat there untouched for 5 years.)

What is this stuff worth?

Last night I needed to make a decision. Whether or not to pay someone to try to retrieve my files for me. Which lead me to ask: how much are they worth?

My answer: not much.

In fact, the idea of starting over fresh was more appealing than having all the old stuff restored.

I’ve understood the value of removing physical clutter from my surroundings for a long time. (I moved 3 boxes out of my office and into storage 2 days ago – and I can still feel the difference in the room.)

In that moment, I realized that the same principles apply to digital stuff.

The weight of unfinished things

Products and courses that I downloaded and should read. E-books I should finish and market. Blog posts I should finish and publish. Email I should respond to.

The truth is this: I don’t need those info products right now. I’m no longer interested in the e-books I started writing. The blog posts were not meant to be.

Leaving these things hanging around, unfinished – just cluttered my computer (and my mind) and distracted me from moving forward.

There’s more where that came from

I used to hoard information. I had hundreds of newsletters, articles and websites bookmarked because “this is really good and I’m going to need it some day.” (Sadly, this thought process was behind a number of my information product purchase decisions as well.)

The reality is this: I will encounter these ideas again. When I need the information, it will be available. (And more up to date.) I don’t have to save these things.

And the things I wrote? There’s more of that too.

Sometimes the value is in the process

I journal every morning. Several hundred words most days. I rarely go back and read what I’ve written.

The act of writing down my thoughts clears my head. Examining what I’m thinking in that moment reveals useful patterns. Spelling out exactly what a problem is…leads to a resolution.

The value is in the process. I don’t need to keep the entries.

The things I create have no value until they are completed and shared

This was the big lesson.

I have a tendency to get things (this post, for example) to the 90% competed point. Then, I either get:

• Confused and distracted: I wander off topic and wonder what the hell I was writing about in the first place
• Scared: I worry about what people might think
• Bored: I’m done with the subject and I’m ready to move on

This leads to either endless tweaking and perfecting…or abandoning. Which often means the thing doesn’t get published at all.

What this incident made clear is this: the things I published are still here. Everything else is gone.

In terms of providing value to other people/sharing my knowledge/experience – it means that all the effort I put into those things was completely wasted. (It adds up to years.)

The wasted effort did NOT come from losing everything to the virus. It came from not shipping (as Seth Godin would say.)

Things are gonna change around here

Having all my work nuked was a bit of a wake up call.

And like most wake up calls, this one triggered a desire to make some changes.

• To ask myself: “Do I really need this Right Now?” before purchasing any new info products. (Or bookmarking a site. Or signing up for any newsletters.)
• To identify and back up the few things I really need.

And maybe most importantly: to ship.

To let the things I’m working on go and to put them out there before they are perfect.

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