Ask HN: Dealing with Tool Fatigue? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Dealing with Tool Fatigue?

4 pointsnight-rider5 comments

I regularly bookmark various SaaS products I find on Product Hunt aswell as Hackernews & Reddit. I do make use of them since I made a personal pact to use them in the future to help get things done. But it’s reached a point where I can rest on my laurels and leverage these tools daily yet there is the nagging feeling that another tool out there is better (and there sometimes is) or a new tool can 10x your productivity. The web has reached saturation levels of tooling and I feel overwhelmed by it all. Do you stick to a few tried & tested tools and ignore the new shiny knowing you could be potentially more productive by signing up?

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This is ultimately a concern borne out of consumerism and fashion and it's something that we don't talk about enough in the technology sector. Programmer's are just as much consumers as anybody else. The most popular tool isn't always the best one, but the one that was best marketed, and there's huge pressure to consume more and keep up with trends. This in addition to the surplus capital that has poured into the tech sector over the past decade is what explains the tool saturation you are experiencing.

My 2c, if you want to have a long and successful career, you will need to focus your attention on the problems you are trying to solve and not necessarily the tools. Just focusing on the actual business problems you are trying to solve will filter out a huge amount of copy-cat tools that are novel but aren't necessarily adding value.

I search for tools when I need them, and as long as they do the job, I don't look for new ones. Been using pirated Adobe products for a while now because I don't fancy paying a monthly subscription for updates I really don't care about. Once in a while I hear about their new shiny features, and that gets me to update, but that's it.

There is no 10x tool except your brain. Don't believe the hype.

If you have a tool that works for you, why change? Instead of jumping in bed with the newest, shiniest one that's being hyped online, ask yourself "What does this do that my current tool doesn't?" And don't believe the breathless copy about supercharging your productivity or increasing it 10x. That ain't gonna happen.

I tend to create tools, not use them, though I have to ( due to my devops job ) follow the mainstream and use trending tools, that are not perfect sometimes. I would say a good combination is using tools and replace/extend some of them by custom self written code when they don’t meet one’s requirements.

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