Don't Throw Away that Hard Drive

"When you upgrade to a new mobile phone or computer, how you discard your device impacts your security. Most people think that when they reformat their hard drive or restore their mobile device to its factory default settings, everything gets erased -- but that's not usually the case." [emphasis mine]

This statement above is what got my full attention when I watched a short video over at Udemy on the safe disposal of hard drives.  This course is part of a very digestible video series on Mobile Cybersecurity Awareness that was created by Eric Schwartzman of the Center for Digital Innovation at Howard Industries. I highly recommend watching it (and the other 11 lectures in this series) as essential learning for every mobile device user.  It won't even take up too much of your time; as you can see in the screenshot below, it's less than 4.5 minutes.

In the video, Schwartzman shared that MIT had actually conducted a study using over 160 hard drives that were disposed or resold to determine if these were really cleaned out effectively. They were able to recover confidential information like credit card numbers, medical records, social security numbers. Yikes.

6 Productive Things to Do Away from Social Media

Do you feel that sometimes your social network's feed is so full of new information, opinions, and negativity? It can get quite overwhelming, especially when there are hot topics that get many people firing on all cylinders. A study has recently found scientific proof why we would feel inundated while traversing the digital landscape. One way people deal with this is by doing a digital detox.

In late 2010, I did a 7-day detox from my entire social network and, because of work, used only SMS and email for communications. If I needed to research online, I tried very hard not to stray towards any of my social media accounts. Ironically, getting sore eyes in the last 2 days made the detox even easier. Remembering how refreshed my mind truly became after that week, it made me want to do another digital detox soon. But then I got to wondering about why I urgently felt like this -- do I simply need to purge all the bad vibes or, worse, am I already addicted to my online habits?

Think about this part I highlighted from the article "Social Media Detox: Identifying Addiction and Disconnecting From Your Newsfeed":

“You know social media is taking over your life when you feel worse after being on it, when you spend more time on it than planned, and when you forgo regular activities to continue browsing..." [emphasis mine]

If this rings true for you, then you're in luck, that article provides four very simple, very doable steps to deal with that stuff.  And to help you further, below are six other things you can do while you're weaning from your social media:

There is Value in Clear and Simple Business Writing

One of the longest projects I had ever handled involved overhauling the poor documentation practices of a technical support organization and introducing them to a set of writing guidelines based on web writing principles. It took over four years of very patiently hammering in the value of clear and simple writing into business communications, despite the challenge of people often returning to bad habits out of complacency. I knew that my work was finally done when I heard my own words being echoed by the majority even with my back turned.

This is what makes me fully agree with the points outlined in Harvard Business Review's article, "Bad Writing Is Destroying Your Company’s Productivity". These excerpts below especially made me nod with gusto:

"A majority say that what they read is frequently ineffective because it’s too long, poorly organized, unclear, filled with jargon, and imprecise."

"...the whole organization drowns in productivity-draining blather."

"Clear leadership, expressed in writing, creates alignment and boosts productivity."

Here are some points I would like to add, based on my experiences handling business communications in corporate environments: