2007-09-02 9:37 PM

Using The Best Tool For The Job

I recently got a new electric shaver. It had been a long time coming.

I put off shopping for a new shaver because the previous one was doing the job, just not well. I had no idea how poorly it was working until I started using the new one. It was more than just being new and functioning well — I was able to use the best tool for the job at hand.
The new unit has different heads for different shaving jobs: a coarse toothed head equivalent to my old shaver, a fine toothed head, an ear trimmer, and a foil shaver. While I’ve already decided the latter two are unlikely to see much use I’m happy with having twice as many tools as before.

I can see the parallels to my learning skills. I was doing fine with the haphazard way I’d learned to read. In fact I discovered I read faster than almost everyone I knew. Yet when I started learning speed reading techniques I was able to really crank up the rate at which I consumed written materials. And the fun part is that my comprehension generally increased as my speed increased.

Now I have multiple tools for working with words. I can either plod along at about twice the average reading speed or I can apply a few quick techniques and double or triple your reading speed.

Where in your life are you slow to invest in new tools because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

Posted by Wayne Buckhanan No Comments »

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