Overwhelm Yourself with as Many Tools as Possible (Why Not?)
Tool Maximalism
It seems that people generally think in the following ways:
- Foolish people believe that one should use as many tools as possible from the beginning.
- Smart people believe that's wrong, and that one should minimize tool usage when starting something, and gradually increase tools only as needed.
Of course, what I'll argue is that the smart people are wrong, and in fact, it's best to use as many tools as possible from the start.
To be more specific, let's explicitly break down what each perspective means:
Why foolish people think that way:
- It's good to be able to use as many features as possible.
Why smart people think that way:
1. Complexity increases each time you add tools, to the point of becoming unmanageable.
2. You have to learn how to use each additional tool, so each time the number of tools increases, you have to pour time and effort into it.
- It becomes cumbersome to use freely, like an "overly ambitious time management system."
- So if you start out using a lot of tools at once, it takes too long just to prepare before you even begin.
How I will advocate for my argument in this post:
1. Why the smart people are wrong
2. What the foolish people missed
On the problem of using many tools
1. The problem of increasing complexity as the number of tools used increases
In reality, the cases where increasing complexity becomes a problem are when tools that redundantly handle the same scope interfere with each other.
For example:
I want to set up keyboard hotkeys, but there isn't a single tool with the features I want to do that. So I end up having to use multiple tools. And what happens then is:
It gets confusing how changing a key to another key in one tool gets applied in another tool.
Keys don't press or release as intended in multiple places handling the same key.
Settings made in one tool conflict with settings in another tool and work strangely.
Changing something in one tool causes a strange phenomenon in interaction with another tool.
But for tools that don't interfere with each other, it's not an issue.
For example:
In a code editor, there are two extensions that show the starting part of the bracket where the current caret is located even when scrolling down.
1. An extension that displays the starting part of the bracket at the top of the screen.
2. An extension that shows the contents of the matching opening bracket after each closing bracket.
You can see that both deal with the same subject of brackets, but their areas don't interfere with each other.
2. The problem of having to learn and handle the usage of many tools
First, you can use meta-tools that assist in handling tools (it’s also a topic that will be covered later in the Tool Intelligence series)
And the second is, of course, blatant memorization. The problem is that such things are usually not treated as "subjects of learning." If you treat the usage of tools as "subjects of learning" and deliberately memorize them, it can be done. Such things are usually much lighter and smaller in volume than what is normally seriously treated as subjects of learning, which is why they are not treated as subjects of learning. So if you try to master them deliberately, it's easy to do.
(My view that people overestimate the difficulty of learning them can be shown by this example. If someone made 300 more keyboard shortcuts for a code editor, you'd probably think it's crazy and a mess. But for people learning a foreign language, memorizing 300 completely new words is just everyday life, and it can be done in a day or a few days. Also, this is a long story to tell, but in my experience, it's easier to memorize keyboard shortcuts than foreign language words.)
Why Tool Maximalism is Necessary
1. You can't know in advance what will be good.
It's hard to even have a rough map of what tools are available for what you want. New tools are constantly emerging.
And until you try it, you don't know what tool will be used for what, or how useful it will be. There is a saying, "When you have a hammer in your hand, every problem looks like a nail," which shows that often, it is only after mastering a tool that you see the problems to which that tool can be applied.
When the use cases of a powerful tool fit your situation, it is often extremely useful. Even if that's not the case, it is common for a tool whose significance was hard to know at present to become necessary later.
On the other hand, "missing out" on something can cause enormous losses.
These aspects make VC investment-like approach useful in selecting tools.
Trying out each tool should be treated as an investment.
Invest in multiple and hope that one of them succeeds. In other words, Spray & Pray.
Attempts that don't work out are also part of the investment.
2. If a tool is good enough, even if it's not needed now, it's likely to be needed later.
People tend to be bad at judging what tools they need, but good at judging how powerful a tool is, which makes this way a practical approach.
3. On the other hand, doing the same task incrementally increases the burden much more.
Steps are burdensome by their very existence. The idea behind the original advice to start with minimized tools is to reduce the burden, but when divided into steps, the division into steps itself makes the burden greater.
For example:
Installing 100 code editor extensions at once and intensively testing them for a day vs. gradually testing them, say, 1 per day for 100 days.
The latter is much more tiring and burdensome.
When it's actually not good to use too many tools from the beginning
1. Each one is too big and takes too long to prepare to use, so the cost of starting late outweighs the benefits of the tool.
2. Overlapping ones that handle the same scope interfere with each other.
What to do in the end
Opposite to "starting with minimized tools and gradually increasing," you should "use maximized tools and gradually reduce them." That way you don't miss out on anything.
In other words, the tools you use should not gradually increase, but start at the maximum and gradually decrease.
You just need to figure out which tools to test simultaneously and which tools to apply gradually. Test and learn the tools in parallel as many as possible, except for those that need to be applied gradually.
The post is over. To share this post, copy and paste this: https://sungho.blog/p/overwhelm-yourself-with-as-many-tools-as-possible
Also, you can subscribe to this blog.