One of the perks of being a tech reviewer is getting the newest toys and trying them out for free. One of the non-perks is doing a ‘shootout’, getting a bunch of said toys together and trying them all out at the same time.
So there I was, trudging up Bukit Timah Hill at an unprecedentedly early hour on a weekend (yes, working weekends, woot), trying to get decent photos for publishing with six cameras. A couple of them were excellent; easy to use, fast and responsive, like extensions of my eyes. A couple were average. A couple were bricks; using them to take photos was like using a rock to write.
(At some point, I wanted to hurl said bricks down the hillside, just to see them go crunch against the rocks.)
About halfway up the hill and over a hundred pictures later, I discovered something interesting: I was actually taking better pictures with the cameras I enjoyed using. Big duh right – would you do better using a big granite slab to write or a pencil – but you know what? It brought home closer to me that using the tools you love not only help you love what you do so it makes you do more, it also helps you do it better.
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interesting point. Really. So lets imagine I’m a writer (hey, you are one, too!) and I want to improve my writing. Then I should buy myself the most-fun-providing-tool to write on. For example an apple macbook air. Crazy stuff, the design, the weight.. ah, you know what I mean!
Would I write better if I will be typing on a macbook air?
Maybe I should just change the program I use? This is a approach where I can speak from my own experience that with minimalistic wordprocessors like “focused” instead of MS Word I write a lot more, faster and more creatively.
All in all a great advice for trying out by oneself!
Hey Michael,
I’d love a MacBook Air too, but I suppose the caveat is that you should work with the tools you love – that won’t break your bank!
Whenever I start grumbling about not having the latest tools, I try to remind myself that a lot of the great classics were written with only paper and pen. That helps
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