I have been playing with Sudoku puzzles lately. The easiest are just logic problems. Each number entered pinpoints the following number. They offer no possible deviations. They have the most clues. Harder puzzles have fewer clues; with the hardest puzzles having the least amount.
The latter are the puzzles that resemble a maze. They contain multiple choices. In solving them, I often make the wrong choice; and sixty numbers later, I realize my mistake. When I first started solving Sudoku puzzles, I would erase everything and start over. Then I started making backups.
If I am solving a puzzle on line, I will print out my answers to the point of the decision; note the decision on the print out; then proceed to the next decision point, an obvious error or the solution. I do this each time I have to guess. (If I am solving a puzzle on paper, then I recreate the answers on different sheets.) If there are multiple decision trees and I see that I am wrong, I return to the latest first and try the alternate course. If that doesn’t work I move to the next branch up the tree.
Using multiple backups of my solution attempts, allows me to solve even the most difficult puzzles in the least amount of time.
Using multiple backups in your business makes sense too. There are two ways to make multiple backups; and I recommend both. The first is to have several snapshots of your data. This allows you to roll data back to a previous point in time. If, for example, an employee deletes a file on Tuesday and you do not discover it until Friday, then having a backup set for each day of the week allows you to restore that file.
The second form of multiple backups is to backup the same data onto different sets of media (e.g. tape and cd) or to a remote site. This insures against media failure. Backing up to a remote site also protects against loss of data due to disaster or theft. For more information on remote back up, visit www.remotebackup-at-hbs.com.
