The Lake and the Cloud

Long story short. My phone went in the lake recently. (Rice didn’t work in resurrecting it).

Because my work/life is done in the “cloud”, recovering from this was not traumatic. It as simple as getting a new unlocked phone (cheap these days) and popping in my sim card. Just like that, I was back at it. I had to re-download a few apps and configure a couple settings, but nothing very time intensive or stressful.

If you’re still worrying about which folder on your hard drive to store something in or arranging your contacts in your phone’s memory. Stop.

Get a Dropbox account.
Do all your documents on Google Drive for a week.
Learn how your friends are using Evernote.
Put your passwords into LastPass.
Click the box that enables your photos to get backed up the next time you’re on wifi.

Smartphones (and other smart things like desktops, laptops and tablets) can do a lot, but they haven’t learned to swim yet. Protect yourself by moving your digital footprint to the cloud.

The time you take to do this may well be worth the investment someday. You can’t buy an insurance policy that brings back the photos of your kids.