Mastering Your Tools

I am always so tempted to keep expanding my toolset. It is a bad habit and one I need to stop.

I am slowly learning that mastering your tools and your craft isn’t about building a large toolset, it is about understanding the tools you have and knowing both their intricacies and their limitations.

Within reason I think a master craftsperson is someone who knows how to solve the problem elegantly with the tools available to them. This is the exact opposite of someone who spends their time pontificating about why one tool is better or worse than another.

Back before the internet I used to spend hours learning what every setting and key on my computer did. I was never one for reading the manual so I would just keep trying stuff and keep trying to do things faster. Unfortunately this is a skill I have lost since realising I can google something to satiate my curiosity.

I was a master of my Commodore 64 way more than I am of my iPhone. That doesn’t seem right to me and it is something I want to change about myself.