We Had Backups, We Just Didn't Know Where
An inventory sheet, a buyer candidate list, and a folder of email drafts. For a small team running a B2B business, automation lives on these three kinds of files. One day, a cleanup script on our Windows device overwrote the buyer candidate list with an empty file. A backup existed. The trouble was that nobody knew where it was or which copy was the newest, so recovery took 40 minutes.
So Every Friday We Delete Something on Purpose
Instead of hunting for the exit after the fire starts, we decided to practice putting it out. The rules are simple.
Every Friday afternoon
1. Pick one of the three core files at random
2. Keep a separate copy, then delete the original
3. Tell the bot just one sentence: 「please restore it」
4. Log how long it takes
What Changed in Three Weeks
Week 1: 40 min → Week 2: 19 min → Week 3: 6 min
• **Before**: Backups were scattered across three places, and the bot asked which folder to check every single time.
• **After**: The backup location is pinned in a one-page guide file, and the Mac mini stamps the latest copy with a date label every night.
• **The inventory sheet** now leaves a copy automatically before each change.
• **The buyer candidate list** saves as a new file instead of overwriting the old one.
• **Email drafts** keep a pre-send folder and a sent folder separate.
A Small Discovery
The drills showed us that slow recovery was not a technical problem. It was a signposting problem. The bot did not need to be smarter. It needed one line saying 「backups live here」. The drill takes about 20 minutes, so it is hardly a burden. This Friday, try deleting one file. Copy it first, of course.