There's been lots of talk about robustness and adaptability. For example Taleb's Black Swan and anti-fragile organizations or this text about how wasteful consuming could actually be a brilliant survival trick for the whole human race (h/t Kaj Sotala for this one again).

This all came back to me now that Timely has been down for a second day running. They are having some sort of issues with their DNS and are fixing it and that sort of thing just happens. But I was just surprised to realize what kind of a huge wrench it threw into my day rhythm.

Nowadays I start each work day by planning it out in Timely. I have also started planning the whole week, so I can use Timely also as a to-do list. On Thursday morning I couldn't get Timely open, so I had no idea on what I was going to do today or what I would have to get done before Friday. I naturally still get stuff done, but it feels a bit like being on the open sea without a compass. You can paddle this way and that, but not really sure if it's exactly what you should be doing.

I've never managed mine time (at least succesfully) in any sort of organized manner at all and have done just fine. Now I've been using Timely for a maybe three weeks or so and I'm suddenly completely bewildered without it.

The good

Obviously the service is brilliant, as I can outsource so much effort and cognitive processing to it. The effort is obviously worth investing and I get a much better return on it if I use a service to do it, compared to if I would use a pen and a paper to draw myself a week calendar for every day and then fiddle with it and a timer to manage and track my time.

The bad

Depending on a service makes my routines brittle. If I'm using pen and paper, nothing short of multiple amputations or a brain aneurysm (or forgetting to bring a pencil case) can stop me from tracking my doings. On the other hand, a simple DNS problem, crashed computer or forgotten password can stop me from using all these nice new services which I depend to do stuff. Not to mention what happens when one of the service providers decides that they've had enough and closes shop.

Conclusion

Oh well, life is full of risks. Using efficient services obviously help me do stuff that I have never managed to do on my own. Also, not being able to track my time efficiently won't really matter anyways if we get any sort of real problems, like a very long power shortage, for example. So I'll just keep this in mind in the future, but also gleefully use all possible new services that I happen to find useful.