Everything in its place

Tools in our modern world

I love tools. I love the fact that a well-made tool can increase the effectiveness and often improve your work. I also love that a tool does not guarantee good work. The most incredible tool in the hands of a hack is just a collection of parts. A burden inherent in wood working is having a space in which to work. In which to keep your tools. I’m envious of those that pull their laptop out of a backpack and are suddenly working. Proponents of green woodworking often celebrate it as an activity that requires a small toolbox, only a few tools. There is of course some truth to that. However, I have been working with wood for over thirty years and in that time, I only acquired one or two of the tools commonly used in green wood working. So, although a small tool kit is needed, it is specialized.

In woodworking, as in most disciplines, there are typically several approaches to achieve a similar result. It can be tempting to think purchasing a tool is the key to a skill that you want to acquire. But a tool is only a tool. It is not a proxy for the time, practice and dedication necessary to become proficient. It can also be the case that a tool can get in the way of acquiring a skill. All the fancy measuring tools in the world don't guarantee accuracy.

As a furniture maker and a small business owner there are a lot of tools that help me document, promote, and sell my work. These tools require computers and the internet and this… writing. Writing has never been easy for me. I mostly skipped the part of high school where you lay the foundation for a life of letters. What I have found with things in our lives that are hard is that with a little bit of distraction tasks typically move from difficult to impossible. I often find myself opening my computer, seeing a tab in my browser from a few days ago that might remind me of something I need to buy and ten minutes later, that tool I turned to for help running my business has overtaken my attention. Although it is true that computers, apps, the internet are all just tools, they live in a bundle that makes them difficult to disentangle and can therefore come with additional challenges to use. They exist like a messy toolbox full of dust and shavings. Those that need to be sharp might have rust on the blade. Those that need to be precisely aligned are missing pieces. Many of these digital tools that are essential to get through our days, but they just do too much. I don’t use half of the functions of the word processing document I’m using to edit this, and I don’t care to expand on that.

For a while, without even knowing what I was looking for, I’ve wished that the digital tools I use to communicate and run my business did less—and did the one thing I want them to do better. Kind of like when I pick up my chisel, I don’t also expect it to also be a marking knife. I just want it to be a really good chisel. Makers of digital tools just can’t hold themselves back. And I find that distracting. A few months ago, I was listening to a podcast and the host was talking about how much they loved the Remarkable digital paper tablet. I have been using a system of scratch pads for a while now and I always feel like I write something and then the next day it falls into the void. Then add a few weeks and trying to recall that idea or sketch is an impossible task. There are 8 or 9 scratch pads floating around in different places, some in folders, some in bins. I lose work all the time. So, I was intrigued by the idea of the digital paper tablet. Having the ability to continually write in essentially the same space but with a powerful organization system. I had a hard time in my head going from the idea of what something like that can do to the justification of spending money to do something that seems so basic and simple. I did what we often do and just said it’s too expensive and not that important. Then, my wonderful wife bought me one for my birthday. Now I had 3 months to test it out due to their 100-day trial. The first week went by. I was really enjoying writing again in a way I hadn’t experienced in a while. Then the big thing happened.

So, here’s the thing, there is not even a calculator on it. No internet. It does writing and drawing amazingly well. I think at the speed at which I can write letters on a page. I was now only opening my computer to enter an invoice or a receipt. Or to order something. After a week, my computer and my phone turned back into tools. My focus improved. I mean, that’s huge. Just because of the time I was spending writing without distraction or pings and flashes, I got back some of my attention. Some of my focus. This was the first time in longer than I can remember that I got a digital tool that did its function so well and nothing more.

Tools vs. Tools