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Tinkering. Who doesn’t like to tweak things to see if they can get just a little more? It’s like licking the frosting bowl. A little more effort and you get a nice payback.
Adjusting The Sails
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. –Dolly Parton
Some tinkering is good. If we were in a sailboat, we would adjust the sails to give us the most benefit from the direction of the wind. It would be folly to not do this. Same with productivity systems.
When we spend time to automate things in a way that saves us time or attention, that is good. When we adjust things to make them more efficient, that is good too.
Tinkering Run Amuck
Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.” –E. F. Schumacher
Tinkering can run amuck. I’m guilty of it. I spend time looking at software packages, hoping that one will be the solution to all my needs and automate my life in such a way I will never have to think about what I need to do again…it will just magically present itself when I need to do it. Flylady calls this the magic bullet. There is no such thing.
Messing with your system becomes a problem when you spend more time tinkering than actually getting things done. There’s a great (but blunt) article over at KonasDad about stopping tinkering and just doing.
What do you think?
When has tinkering led you astray? Are you still in the grips of finding the perfect solution? Let me know!
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2 comments ↓
Thanks for the link, and the referral. You are most correct to describe this as blunt - however it was coming with my own frustration of having conquered the tinkering (or “hacking”) menace, and then watching lists and blogs and message boards with endless recommendations on more tinkering, hacking, and the wasting of time.
Where I got really frustrated was where people would have to *copy* their action lists into the new program. This seemed, to me, to be counter productive.
Have a great week!
I hear you with the frustration. I did a mentoring program a couple of years ago where the woman got hung up on building the perfect to-do list. She professed to want to be more productive, but in all honesty she was looking for a way to avoid doing anything.
I’ve tinkered myself to a certain extent. It’s a habit that can be hard to break. But I found that when I disciplined myself to not tinker, my system was more stable (software-wise) and I really did get more done. I had to wean off tinkering, though. At first I allowed myself to tinker on Sundays, then one hour on Fridays, and now I only look at software once a month.
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