After 2 days my MacBook is back from Intensive Care and appears to be functioning normally. Lessons learned:

• there is a price to pay for innovation and early adoption – the occasional failure
• don’t upgrade your computer software during a road-trip and in a hotel room
• make absolutely 100% sure on a weekly basis that your back-up systems at home or office are functioning and accurate
• keep a knowledgable IT guru in your advisory and support team

My thanks to Kim and Phillippa for their support and counselling (!) during my 36 hours.

I was saddened this week to hear that the young man who shared his bucket list on the web after a terminal cancer diagnosis had passed away.

Earlier in the week I discussed this with a dental team and, frankly, we all ended up in tears, talking about the things we would do if we suffered a similar fate.

I speculated that I’ve been living my own life as a bucket list since my father died in 1998 – a wake up call.

That’s why I get so much done – because I took the advice to live every day of my life as if it were my last as a mantra and not just a Hallmark card slogan.

Why do people have to get a death sentence before they write down a list of all the things they really want to do?

Rather than resolutions – if you have some down time between Xmas and New Year, write down your own bucket list – then plan to complete it within 3 years – then you can write another one.

If it means giving up your job, changing your career, selling your company, moving your family around, taking a pay cut – do it anyway.

None of us know how much time we have left.

By the way – when you are living your bucket list, sometimes your personal upgrades fail and you have to go back and restore from your back up. That’s part of the evolutionary process – learning from mistakes.

So:

• recognise the price you might pay for personal innovation
• try not to live your bucket list in hotel rooms!
• make sure you have a back up
• keep a guru around to listen to you