One Thing To Do Today: Add Self Review to Tuesday Checklist

It’s Tuesday Sweep Time on my calendar.  I’m trying to create a github-pages site that will be a nice little control panel to make this easier for me. The site is still super rough because I’m newish to Jekyll and the idiosyncrasies of the GitHub version, but feel free to clone it to make your own.  One of the pages is my security sweep checklist. I’ve put doing a self review right at the top to reinforce the “security is a process not a product” stuff.

1. What did I do (or not do) that I knew better than to do (or not do)?
2. Why did I slip up? What would have made it easier to do the right thing?
3. Change: Make it, schedule making it, ask the community, drop a note to who can change it.

For example, this week while traveling in a rental car I plugged my phone into the rental car’s USB port. Not the smartest.

I slipped up because:

• I fell asleep the night before without plugging in my phone.
• Really wanted a charge so I could take pictures and in an emergency make phone calls. That felt more immediate than security fears.
• My battery pack was in a bag in the trunk
• The charger I’m using doesn’t work very well anymore anyway
• It was super appealing to listen to my own tunes

Next time could be better if:

• If I had a better bedtime routine. There was a plug right on the lamp.
• I would have pulled the car over if I had been alone. Next time I could be less emotionally lazy about annoying travel companion to get bag out.
• If I had a battery charger that was flatter and did better job of charging my phone I might be more likely to leave in my purse instead of computer bag.
• For music: If I had put bluetooth speakers, an AUX cable, or an FM radio transmitter on travel packing list. Alternatively, could have looked up local radio stations. Could have at least tired. Might have been pleasantly surprised.

Actions I could take are (brainstorm):

• Plug in my phone right now. A reminder to be better about being aware of phone charge level.
• Bad bedtime hygiene, but set up the charger on nightstand to get used to having it there.
• Actually write down a bed time routine so I can add things like this to it.
• Talk to travel companion about how I didn’t ask. Ask him to remind me that I care if he sees me doing that in the future.
• Add items to christmas/birthday list, but as really asking people to donate this year, so not reliable.
• Find that packing list / travel routine I made that time. Update it.
• Could I finally make that adapter that would just let power through? Wouldn’t that have been in the other bag, too?

Narrowed down actions I will actually do:

• Find my phone, plug it in.
• Talk to travel companion.
• See if we have a different charger in the house that will already do a better job. Add a new one to shopping list if not.
• Put “security projects brainstorm” to think of what fun hardware projects I want to do on the calendar. Maybe USB thing, maybe not.
• Put “packing” into file search. If packing list is easy to find, update it.

That’s the drift. Try to figure out went wrong. Don’t get all guilty about it, just improve the process in the ways that can be delivered immediately.