I’ve written previously about the ills of perfectionism, and in particular its consequence which is that rather than doing something imperfectly, we prefer not to do it (hence, often, procrastinating very actively).
There are cases in which it is better to not do something than to do it half-way. Blogging comes to mind. Or, getting involved in something (maybe even with someone).
With backups, however, it is not the case. It’s better to have a bad backup than no backup at all. It’s better to make backups irregularly than never. Basically, compared to “no backups at all”, anything is an improvement.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s better to have good backups, make them regularly, and make sure that you can restore data from them, than make backups sloppily, whenever you think about it, and without testing them. But that is still better than doing nothing.
So, today’s post for Backup Awareness Day is to remove your guilt about not having a perfect backup process set up. I haven’t, and I know I should, and I’ve been wanting to set it up for years, but something (including the need to acquire certain necessary tech skillz) always gets in the way. And I know that if today I decide to “set things up” it’ll send me down rabbit holes I won’t come out of, and the day will end without me having more backups than when I woke up this morning.
I will therefore suck it up and hit that “export” button manually in WordPress one more time. Yes, I’ll get an automated system up and running, but until then, at least once a month, I’ll take some emergency measures.
And so should you.