Saturday morning. Coffee. Notion open. I was tidying up old TikTok scripts in a Kanban board. I was powering through work and felt really productive. Except I didn't delete the scripts. I bulk-deleted tasks across my entire workspace. Every active task. Every client project. Gone. And yes, I panicked. I'm not going to pretend I was cool about it. I sat there staring at an empty workspace with a full client load and no idea how bad the damage was or how I was going to recover. So I did the one thing I've been training myself to do when something breaks: I opened Claude and started talking it through. (I call him Fred. Long story.) Fred calmed me down first, which honestly was the thing I needed most. Then we got to work. In about 15 minutes we had: - A clean backup of the 55 tasks that were still visible, exported to a markdown file I could actually work from while Notion was down - A support ticket filed with Notion with the exact restore point I needed (before noon CT Saturday) - A rule for myself: don't touch Notion again until the restore is confirmed, because any new edits would get overwritten Notion finally got back to me this morning (two days later). The restore is in progress. It's taken a lot longer than I expected, and it's cost me real work hours, but it's happening. And in the meantime, the markdown backup has been doing the job. I've been moving work forward without my "main system" even being available. I very quickly learned: Your system is only as good as your recovery plan. I had no backup routine for Notion. None. Didn't ever think I needed one! That's on me, and it's changing this week. Go AI first. It just saves time. I am actively learning to move out of my first instinct, panic and click, and into "open Claude and describe what just happened." Most of the problems you're used to just dealing with as they come up? AI can solve them, or at least get you unstuck in a fraction of the time. Lost files, broken spreadsheets, an email you don't know how to write, a process that keeps falling apart; stop white-knuckling it. Go AI first.

I've been working on a short course to help me, and that - of course - turned into something I can share. Based on Stephen Kotler's work with flow (Stephen is known for making flow science feel like something you can use in real life instead of a lab) it took me a while to get the course the way I wanted. It's a drip sequence of 35 emails, with tasks that take 5-10 minutes a day. I built an email drip sequence in MailerLite (free) Created a product in Stripe for the payment link that collects payment Built a 2-step n8n sequence that listens for that specific payment, then puts the email in a MailerLite group that kicks off the email sequence. (You could also use Zapier or Make.com for beginner-friendly automations) My ICP (ideal customer profile) for this course is me! AuDHD with chronic health conditions, and I have projects I need to get finished. Take a look here ... and I'm still working on perfecting the web copy. https://3bees.digital/find-your-flow/