For the first time in eleven years of travel, I became profoundly sick while on the road. No, I’m not sharing details of any kind. What I will share is just this; I wasn’t prepared.

When I travel, I look at the weather, where I’m going, how long, and I pack accordingly. I have my presentations and code backed up, locally, at home, and on the cloud. I’m ready for flight cancellations and all sorts of travel mishaps. But I was not ready for being ill. I really should have been.

I think a lot of our emergency preparedness is like this. We think we have our backups, high availability, disaster recovery all set. After all, we’ve experienced a lot of different outages and have learned from them. Further, we know that things go wrong, so we look at what happens to others and try to learn from them, rather than on our own. Yet, chances are, something is going to take you by surprise.

What can you do?

Well, same as you’ve done mostly. Examine and test your preparations. Learn from others. Keep an eye out for changing circumstances. Most of all, practice recovery. Finally, try to develop a resilient attitude about things. That should be as much a part of your preparations as anything else.