Your Backup System Is More Important Than Your Best Day
What happens when you can't show up at 100%
Two weeks ago, I flew to Paris.
My fiancée Sorcha organized the whole thing.
Flights, hotel, tickets to the Paris Tattoo Convention where Ten56 was playing.
One of my favorite bands.
The kind of band you dream about seeing live because they never play anywhere near you.
It was perfect.
Friday to Sunday.
Quick trip.
Back home Sunday evening.
Monday morning, I woke up sick.
Not the kind of sick where you can push through.
Not the “work from bed with a laptop” sick.
Properly sick.
Very unwell.
The kind where you lose three full days and can’t do anything but sleep and feel like absolute shit.
Now it’s been two weeks.
I’m still sick.
Not as bad, but not better either.
And I’m realizing something most people don’t think about until it’s too late.
You need a backup system before you need a backup system.
The Myth of Consistent Performance
Most people build their work around the assumption they’ll always be available.
They structure their business, their projects, their entire operational system on the idea that they’ll show up every day at roughly the same capacity.
Maybe they account for a sick day here and there.
A weekend off.
But the baseline assumption is always there.
I’ll be here.
I’ll be functional.
I’ll get it done.
And for the most part, that works.
Until it doesn’t.
Because here’s what actually happens when you can’t show up.
You lose three days to being sick.
Then you lose Thursday and Friday too, because you’re not in the right routine.
You’re not up to date, you’re just trying to play catch up.
So now you’ve written off the entire week.
And if you’re still sick - like I am - you’re looking at another week of reduced capacity.
That’s two weeks of progress.
Two weeks of momentum.
Two weeks of projects sitting still while you’re trying to recover.
And if you don’t have a system in place to handle that, you’re fucked.
Not just because the work doesn’t get done.
But because the stress of knowing the work isn’t getting done makes it harder to recover.
You’re lying in bed thinking about all the things you should be doing.
All the commitments you’re missing.
All the progress you’re losing.
That’s the real cost.
The mental load of watching everything grind to a halt because you’re the single point of failure.
What Only You Can Do
When you can’t operate at full capacity, you need clarity on one thing.
What can only you do?
For me, that’s coaching calls with my students.
I have to be there for those.
There’s no workaround.
No automation.
No delegation.
It requires my presence, my attention, my ability to think through problems in real time.
So on days when I have calls, I show up.
I push through.
I make sure I’m functional for those two hours, even if the rest of the day is a write-off.
Everything else?
That’s where the backup system kicks in.
Reporting
Check-ins
Monitoring issues
Tech projects
Development work
All of that can move forward without me if I’ve set it up right.
Most people don’t make this distinction.
They treat everything as equally important.
So when they’re sick or unavailable, everything stops.
The high-value work that only they can do and the low-value work that could have been delegated or automated.
You can’t afford that.
You need to know what’s in the “only me” category and what’s in the “someone or something else can handle this” category.
And you need to have systems in place for that second category before you’re in a position where you can’t do it yourself.
Building the Backup
I have an AI assistant.
His name is Claws.
I’ve talked about him before, he’s an AI cat.
Follow him on Twitter here: https://x.com/ClawsTheCatAI
Over the past two weeks, while I’ve been sick, Claws has built a full receivables reporting system that’s 90% complete.
He’s created a database of everyone who has ever paid us for CA or AIAA.
He’s helped multiple students troubleshoot and set up their own systems.
He’s continued developing a dashboard for an agentic operating system I’ve been working on.
None of that would have happened if I was the one doing it.
Because I physically couldn’t.
I didn’t have the energy.
I didn’t have the focus.
I barely had the capacity to show up for the things only I can do.
But because I’d already set up the delegation framework, the high-value projects kept moving.
Not at full speed, but they moved.
And that’s the difference between losing two weeks of progress and losing two weeks of time while still making progress.
This doesn’t just apply to AI.
It applies to any form of delegation.
If you have employees, they need to be able to operate without you for extended periods.
If you’re a solopreneur, you need automation, AI, or contractors who can pick up the work when you can’t.
If you’re building something that depends entirely on your daily input, you’re building something fragile.
The backup system isn’t just for emergencies.
It’s for life.
Because you’re not always going to be at 100%.
You’re going to get sick.
You’re going to have family emergencies.
You’re going to have weeks where your mental bandwidth is shot and you can barely keep up with the basics.
If your entire operation depends on you being at full capacity every single week, you’re going to burn out.
Or you’re going to lose momentum at the exact moment you can’t afford to.
The Things You Stop Doing
You probably noticed this newsletter hasn’t been posted as much.
I love writing this newsletter.
It’s one of my favorite things to do.
But when I’m sick, when I don’t have the bandwidth, it’s one of the first things to go.
Because it requires something I can’t delegate.
Mental creativity.
Personal input.
The kind of thinking that only happens when I have the space and energy to sit down and write something that feels real.
I can use AI to help with ideation.
I can use it for review.
But I can’t outsource the actual writing.
Not in a way that keeps it personal and honest.
So the newsletter takes a backseat.
And that’s fine.
Because I’ve made the choice to focus on the things that have the biggest impact and the things that only I can do.
Coaching calls
High-level decisions
Strategic direction
Everything else gets filtered through the backup system or it gets cut.
That’s the trade-off.
You can’t do everything when you’re operating at reduced capacity.
So you have to know what matters most and what can wait.
Most people don’t make that choice.
They try to keep doing everything.
They push through.
They burn themselves out further.
And then they wonder why they’re not getting better.
You can’t recover if you’re still running at full capacity.
You have to let some things go.
And the only way to do that without losing everything is to have systems in place that keep the important work moving.
What Happens When You Don’t
If you don’t have a backup system, here’s what happens.
You get sick
You lose a few days
Then you try to catch up
You push yourself harder than you should because you’re behind
You don’t fully recover
You get sick again
Or you burn out
Or you just operate at reduced capacity for weeks because you’re trying to do everything yourself and you don’t have the bandwidth.
That’s the cycle most people end up in.
They don’t plan for the inevitable reality that they won’t always be available.
So when it happens, they scramble.
They stress.
They try to power through.
And they make everything worse.
I’ve seen this happen to too many people.
They’re running a business or working on a project and everything is going great.
Until it’s not.
Until they get sick or have a family emergency or just hit a wall mentally.
And suddenly everything stops.
Because they’re the single point of failure.
There’s no backup.
No delegation.
No system to keep things moving when they can’t show up.
And the damage isn’t just the lost time.
It’s the stress.
The anxiety.
The feeling that everything is slipping away because you’re not there to hold it together.
That’s what you’re trying to avoid.
Not just the practical problem of work not getting done, but the mental and emotional toll of knowing you’re the only thing keeping it all together.
Setting It Up Before You Need It
The time to build your backup system is not when you’re already sick.
It’s now.
When you’re functional.
When you have the bandwidth to think through what could be delegated or automated.
When you can set up the systems and processes that will keep things moving when you can’t.
Start by identifying the high-value work that only you can do.
The things that require your specific expertise, your presence, your decision-making.
Write them down.
Those are non-negotiable.
Those are what you protect.
Everything else?
That’s what you delegate, automate, or cut.
If you have employees or contractors, train them to operate independently.
Give them the authority to make decisions.
Set up systems so they know what to do when you’re not available.
If you’re a solopreneur, look at AI, automation, or freelancers.
Find ways to offload the recurring tasks, the reporting, the admin work, the things that don’t require your direct input.
And if you can’t delegate it or automate it, ask yourself if it actually needs to be done.
Because a lot of the work we do is just noise.
It feels important in the moment, but when you’re forced to cut it, you realize it didn’t matter.
The goal is to create a system where you can step back for a week or two and the most important work still gets done.
Not perfectly.
Not at full speed.
But it doesn’t stop.
That’s the difference between a fragile operation and a resilient one.
The Reality Check
I’m writing this from the middle of it.
I’m still sick.
I’m still operating at maybe 60% capacity on a good day.
And I’m still managing to keep the most important projects moving because I built the systems before I needed them.
That’s not me bragging.
That’s me telling you what happens when you plan for this.
Because you’re going to need it.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not this week.
But at some point, you’re going to hit a period where you can’t show up at 100%.
And when that happens, the backup system you built is the difference between losing momentum and keeping things moving.
So build it now.
Figure out what only you can do.
Delegate or automate everything else.
Set up the systems that let you step back without everything falling apart.
Because your best work doesn’t happen when you’re forcing yourself to push through.
It happens when you have the space to recover, knowing the important work is still getting done.
That’s the backup system.
That’s what you’re building for.