If you keep ignoring a problem, challenge, or issue with your life it will eventually become a major issue and it will become devastating to you. The thing about keeping habits up, is that you stay consitent in your approach on doing the small little things that keep you on track. You will still have stumbling blocks that come along, but they will not be as devastating, because the rest of your life is in order and you are not as easily unsettled. Some of us are constantly on the edge of failure in many areas of our lives, and consequently when a storm comes we are completely unprepared and calamity unfurls.
A good example is my experience this week. I have been trying to maintain my blog site for the last few years. I put a ton of effort into it initially, however, as time has progressed the site started to have some issues. I did not do proper maintenance, or even consider automated routines to support a maintenance cycle. Rather, I procrastinated. Being in IT my whole life, I was cursing myself, knowing full well that ones of these days the system was going to accumulate enough issues to require a fix. I would attempt to resolve or fix the issue, then inevitably disaster would occur.
This nagged at me for awhile, and one day about a month a go, I created an automated back up routine. Never tested it, but got a back up copy of my blog site sent to the cloud so that I could, in a pinch, rescue myself from the grip of destruction. Well, this last week my prophecy came true. A small issue, became a larger one. I went to try to fix it, had an issue and reinitialized a service and the database where all my blog articles go was corrupted. Luckily I had the backup, but even with that, I had an entire process to go through to restore the site. Lots of little issues along the way, but I am finally fully recovered and breathing better now.
In this case the Crash has actually helped me. I used this effort to document and then figure out how to automate a full restoration from a backup if that would be needed again. I also made several major improvements, worked on some much needed security tweaks, and while I was at it, integrated several new tools. My blogging life is much improved now. You will not notice the difference really, or even really care at all, but the point is that the crash was needed to wake me up to the reality of how badly that I needed to take action.
Is there something you are going through, a daily concern perhaps, that you know that the only thing that will wake you up is a crash? If that is the case, why wait until you crash. Figure it out now, rather than wait. You will spend way less time incrementally, then you will spend in a weekend of chaos and stress tyring to fix a problem that your procrastination let fester.
Perhaps you should simulate a crash! Fake that you woke up this morning and that thing you have been ignoring finally came for a visit. What would you be forced to reconcile with? Pretend that you have to deal with it and see how that impacts your attitude about pushing off important matters. If you could reduce the sodium in your diet to prevent a heart attack, then why are you not doing it? If you could live an extra 10 – 15 years in good shape because you started a good training program and kept with it, then why would you wait until it is too late?
Guy Reams
