There are few words that business professionals and academics that live by their computer ever want to hear. These include, “hard drive failure,” “malfunctioning screen,” and in my case, just this last week “logic board failure.”  The result of hearing these words meant that the Apple gods would take my beloved machine away from me, for at least a week, to replace its brains.  It also meant, that I in order to continue with the work that needed to be done, I had to use the parental privilege of eminent domain to commandeer my daughter’s computer for the week.

Once I blew most of Saturday and Sunday getting through the first four stages of grief - denial & isolation, anger, bargaining, and depression – I landed on acceptance Monday morning and got to work.

First things first, I had to get my data. Luckily, I backed up all my data on multiple places, predominately iCloud, Google Drive, Time Capsule and a handy 5G Seagate flash drive, so getting access to my data was not that big of a deal.  What was a big deal was learning how to play the data minimalist game as I could not cram my 1 terabyte bag/drive into my daughter’s 250 GB bag/drive.  I’ve become accustomed to having years of files at my figure tips, so it was an interesting and frustrating week figuring out which files really mattered.  What I learned was that I did not need all that data.  I also found that I could purge at least 300 GB of old files that were destroying the Feng Shui in my folders. Once I got the data access issues out of the way, the next step was figuring out which personal productivity applications, services, add-ons, bookmarks, and extensions I needed to set up and load on her machine.  As a nomad marketing executive, I’ve found that I’ve become extremely reliant on a range of apps and services. In fact, over a period of 36 hours, I found myself reaching for wide range tools, 53 in fact.  Here’s the list.  

While the above list is comprehensive, it is by no mean exhaustive.  For example, it does not include my go-to mobile apps, like Google Maps (loved the Pacman game last weekend), Starbucks, Pokémon Go, Xfinity Stream TV, Audible, email, text messaging, and more. There are any number of other devices, services and solutions that I rely on regularly to get through the day, including my phones (thanks Apple, Google and Verizon), Alexa (thanks Amazon), Internet (thanks Comcast), and we can’t forget Apple’s customer care team, they’re fantastic. That said, if there are any other tools that I am missing, please reach out and let me know. Based on my experience last week, it is clear to me that we are all and forever connected.

So, here is a shout out of gratitude for all those out there, mentioned and not mentioned, making it possible for me and my team to be of service to the industry.