My entire Facebook feed late on Monday was filled with “ So what did you do when Facebook went down? Initially, I was like, Mark must have done this on purpose. The news of the outage and not the 60 minutes interview was EVERYWHERE. But I mean really. It was only six hours. Without a social media platform. Yawn. A lot of us, I included, were just living our lives. 

But I totally get it that there are people who depend on FB and IG for ads and Messenger and WhatsApp for communications. Six hours without a sales or messaging pipeline must have been brutal. 

Still, a complete dependency on a platform, ANY platform, is a dangerous place to plant your enterprise’s flag. If you’ve relinquished control over your systems and processes to a monolithic structure that may offer ease, but lacks actual agility, you’re SOL.

The lesson is not in changing to a different platform. That doesn't fix the problem. The solution lies in looking at the outage as an opportunity to plan for the inevitable. Do you have backup methods in place for communication? Processes? Automations?

Productivity Riffs. Did a really cool InBox challenge with Lab members this month. What will it be this month? Have no idea what the heck I'm talking about? That's okay, we haven't talked in a while.

The Less Doing Labs is a private group chat that gives you access to me for $12 a month or a hundred dollars for the year. If you're interested, watch this super-fast video for more info.

Coolest Reads of the Month

Human Doings are so Last Year How to Stop Your Job From Becoming Your Identity

It’s complicated How to make money as an influencer - the Lynette Adkins way

See what’s up inside HQ by What Did Amazon Do This Week?

So Who Will Pick the Grapes?

MasterClass but for College Credit Outlier.org | The World's Best Online Education

We just can’t with this new normal Our Brains Were Not Built for This Much Uncertainty

Why would you want to? IDK Humans Could Definitely Live to 130, Scientists Say

COOL TECH

SmartExam - Medical Exam in the palm of your hand

KWI - Who Doesn’t Want to Know How To Pick A Lock?

SQUAREAT - Revolutionary Meal Plan for People with beards and sleeve tattoos

SPYRA - So Much More Than a Water Gun. Like, so much more.

Post -Its - NOW IN TRANSPARENT!

STARBUCKS - One-Shot Cold Brew. Finally.

SPAN - A Smart Upgrade for Electric Panels

STUFF AND EVERYTHING

Have you checked out my new personal brand website?

Here's the final episode of the Less Doing Podcast. Sniff Sniff.

But never fear, we're relaunching it with a different format. It will be on the same feed, so if you're subscribed, you're all set. If you're not, subscribe anywhere you listen to your podcasts. It'll be an investigation of the world's oldest continuously operating companies. Super cool content about imperialism, rum, and religion.

Make it an effective day,