Learn To Use The Tools You Have

We’ve been seduced in today’s society that we need more things to solve our problems. Having trouble at work? Try this new software and automation. Feeling lonely? Join a new gym or social club and meet new people. Want to have a healthier diet? Buy the latest nutrition program with all the gimmicks and guarantees.

The truth is, you probably already have everything you need to overcome that challenge at work, to strengthen your relationships, and to prioritize your health. You already have the tools, knowledge, and ability to make progress on whatever it is that needs to be addressed. Yet still we look externally to solve our problems.

This is where I want to make an important point - It’s not that we need new tools to make advancements, we need to get better at using the tools we already have.

It’s unfair to say that a software isn’t working for you if you’re only using a fraction of its functionality. It’s premature to move on from a strategy before you experimented with different ways it might work. It’s silly to throw away a book because you’re trying to read it upside down. 

The value is there and it’s in plain sight, nothing about what we have access to needs to change. It’s our ability to use it that does.

So in order to overcome this hurdle, I have a recommendation - Understand that you need to invest time to get something to work better. Even though you want instant results, you need to invest in your ability to produce those results sustainably. 

This is one of the primary points in Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” where he talks about the difference between ‘production’ and ‘production capacity’. Sometimes things need to get worse or delayed before they can get better and more efficient.

Known as a learning curve, once you overcome that threshold of ability you can start scaling and exponentiating the output you get from any given input. That’s what leads to efficiency, predictability, and sustainable returns.