Bear with me… this is another basketball-inspired post but there’s a work/AI lesson in there at the end :-)
So I really admire Kevin Durant the basketball player… but I fricking love his basketball sneakers - especially the KD 8s. I remember when I told someone after the first time I played in them “Wow. I think my feet just thanked me.”
I realized just how much when I bought a different player’s shoe - I got Giannis’ shoe because when my old pair got old, I love his story, felt a Nigeria connection and the online reviews said it offered a lot of support for the foot.
Here’s the problem - every time I wore them - and I’ve wore them every time I played pickup for a couple of months - my shins hurt like crazy. I wondered if it was just me getting old(er). Then I decided to just buy a new pair of KDs and my feet felt fine. This mattered when I played once a week, but mattered even more once I started playing multiple times a week. I simply didn’t think the slightly different padding and design in the shoes would make so much of a difference to me.
This is my roundabout way of getting to - our tools matter, our mastery and their fit with us matters and we should be aggressive about trying different tools to see what fits for us. I think, like me and my basketball shoes, most people don’t think deliberately enough about the tools they use for work or play.
The tools could be anything - the configuration of your work setup (e.g. I’m dramatically more effective when I have a large monitor), or the pen you use that give you more joy (a friend gave me a Muji once and I noticed I wrote more with it)… or the editing software or IDE that works slightly better for you and results in your being more efficient.
As we use AI more in our workflows and these tools are still evolving, iterating on those can make a dramatic difference.
So here’s a few things to remember
Don’t settle for the first tool you use, but because it works. Try more and see if something works better for you. Experiment a lot - often and forever.
Once you find the tool that works best for you, invest in getting better at it and using it well. If it’s something you use a lot, even minor improvements could yield an amazing return overall.
That’s it. Remember every product you use regularly is an opportunity - to try to get the best fit for you and then optimize it.
Is there a tool or product you particularly enjoy and makes you dramatically better than all it’s alternatives?