I spend a LOT of time studying, learning and teaching others to help them along the way but today I was reminded of something not once but TWICE. I want to share the story because while it seems very simple on the outside I think that it is easily forgotten.
Earlier this week, I was putting up some landscape edging, I went to the store, bought all the right “stuff”, came home and in 90 degree temps took out my handy dandy “baby hammer” – that’s what I call it, its only 6 oz but because I have small hands I LOVE my little hammer, anyway I digress, I start driving the landscape spikes for the edging. Pound, Pound, Pound.. I had to hit those darn things about 60 times and I even broke a couple trying to drive them into the ground.
My arm was tired, I was sweating and there were about 20 more to go… Pound Pound Pound… (I can see my neighbors pointing and laughing at me now). When it dawned on me.. Candace a hammer is the right tool, but you don’t have the RIGHT hammer for that job. Off I go, buy a good 20 oz claw hammer and in 20 minutes the job is DONE, ok so my arm is still tired but I’m done. Simple concept.. one I had completely ignored!
Apparently “someone up there” was trying to remind me of this lesson I was ignoring. Today twice I was reminded of the “using the right tool”. I was speaking to a friend who had asked for some guidance, and he said almost EXACTLY the same words to me that I had said to myself a few days ago.. I mean he used a hammer analogy and it freaked me out a little. He was talking about building a website and wanted to know the “right” kind of website.. again coming back to the right tool for what he wanted to do. (Thank you Larry)
Then this evening I was listening to a training call, and the big emphasis was again, using the right tool, but not only that. It was about once you have the right one, knowing how to use it. Lots of people get stuck in the knowing how to use the tool even once they have identified it.
So how does this all tie together for you? Well, there are thousands of good tools and training on those tools out there and the first thing it is important to decide is which is right for the task, and THEN secondly learning about how to use that tool. Having a bunch of similar tools but using the wrong one takes up huge amounts of your time and energy.
I follow the old, “form follows function” rule, only backwards… Figure out what you want to do, something like have a family website, speed up your pc, put a video online, or sell something online, then figure out which of the tools that will allow you to do that that best fits.. Doing it this way allows you to pick from all the options rather that making something work where its not going to, or perhaps not as easily.
P.S. Just a final thought, if you don’t know the right tool, which sometimes can be hard because there are so many choices, ASK someone that has more knowledge than you do. If someone is doing something that you would like to do, ask them how they did it, what they used.. more than likely they would love to share.
Happy Computing..
Don’t know who to ask? Send me an email or post your question below, Blaine or I would be happy to help.
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