You know that I’m all about distracting myself with games, and this IS a game, but it’s also not really a distraction. You get to change one moment in history, and you can choose between two options. You then learn the cascading effect of that single change.

The first time I played it, I quickly jumped into the thousands with karma. I was helping the world! But just as quickly, my great changes — things I knew would be good — had unforeseen negative consequences. In time, I pretty much botched the whole thing.

The point, of course, is that it’s easy to play armchair historian and point out all the things you would do differently, but we often make those choices without thinking through the full impact of the decision. Even actions or inventions that are clearly “good” can end up having a negative impact on future generations.

Play it and see how you do.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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When I was little, I loved Pitfall deeply. Deeply enough to beg my mother to allow me to take a picture of my high score on the television screen and send it to Activision for a badge. While it took some coordination to play, it was all about memorizing the patterns to get all the treasures.

Someone made an online version, but while it made me so happy to see Pitfall Harry, it didn’t feel like the game anymore. I started running through the first screens, but the gold bar wasn’t where I expected it to be. And I couldn’t get keys on my computer to feel like the game controller. While it wasn’t quite as satisfying as my childhood memories of the game, I’m leaving this here in case anyone else wants to revisit Pitfall Harry.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I love those lists that people create of things you can do to stop yourself from spiraling into anxiety. None of them work for me, but I like to do them along with spiraling into anxiety because I think it makes the anxiety a little easier to manage.

The first is doing a brain dump of everything making me anxious, from the large amorphous things (country/world falling apart) to the more personalized real problems to the more personalized less real problems. For example, there are things I allow onto the list that aren’t really problems. I know they’re not problems, and the list knows they’re not problems. But I figure I’m the only person seeing the list, so I can write them down and take them out of my brain.

This task is helpful for two reasons. The first is that by taking these worries out of my brain, I can tell myself that I can forget about them for a few minutes because I will not forget the list. It’s written down. The second is that I can look back on past lists and see which fears came true and which ones did not.

There were 9 things on the list I wrote on January 3. 7 have been completely resolved. 1 is undecided but is leaning in a good direction. 1 is still happening, but I currently feel okay about it. That’s pretty good, right? A little over two months later, 78% of the things making my heart pound are behind me, and 100% are no longer a worry or making it onto a list in mid-March.

The other thing I’m going to do is try to clear my to-do list. It has become unmanageable, and we were only triaging the time-sensitive tasks. So now I throw a few items that I know we can tackle that week in an email for Josh and one for myself, and we leave it in our inbox and take care of one or two tasks per day. It feels good to get it back down to one page this month.

Maybe next month, we’ll be at a half page. Fingers crossed.

We end the week with Beorn pretty much exactly the same as he was last week. He has not lost weight, but he isn’t eating a lot. I think the antibiotics are killing his appetite, so I’m eager to see if he bounces back next week because the antibiotics will be complete. In the meantime, it’s Critical Care three times per day.

Another bummer: spring break wraps up, and the twins go back to school. Trying to enjoy the weekend, but it’s kind of a teary mess coupled with the drippy stench of Critical Care. Cheers?

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• Nothing… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ highlights things she is thinking about as she ages without children. While she talks and writes about it, she also acknowledges that she needs to take action, and she has rounded up various tasks she needs to do. She writes: “Please forgive the repetition. I think I use these posts as motivation to actually get things done! Let’s hope it works.” I think it’s a good reminder for everyone.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path writes about her husband’s birthday celebration. She makes this point: “We are a family of two (plus cats), and we do everything we can to squeeze as much love and joy out of our time as possible. We have fun and, in a way, treat ourselves as our own kids.” I love that idea — to treat yourself to fun and celebration. Happy birthday, Bryce!

The roundup to the Roundup: A non-update update about Beorn. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 14 – 21) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

I found a lifehack list that is actually full of helpful advice. So many of these lists are full of statements vs. concrete things you can try to improve life. But this list contains helpful steps to take or ideological shifts that actually may make life… better.

Things I loved:

“If you want to get better at anything, do it for ​30 minutes per day for 30 straight days​. It’s easy to over-engineer progress—a bit of dedicated effort each day is all you need.”

So true — it’s better to do something daily for a short period of time than try to carve out large blocks of time in your week. That usually only works for a week or two before you stop doing the task.

“Make a rule to never think twice about investments in yourself. Books, quality food, fitness, and personal development all fit into this bucket. These investments pay dividends for a long time.”

Again, it was just an ideological shift, but I was thinking about how you won’t regret taking the time to cook a healthy meal because you know that investment helps you in the long run.

“In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.”

What did you find on the list that spoke to you?