The importance of a complete toolbox

I've been thinking for years on what is the kind of contribution that I could give, what's valuable in my knowledge that could be shared with other people.

I have set up this infrastructure (website, blog, social media pages) to put down some of these concepts that are wondering in my head in a way that is reachable for all my contacts and for other curious people, and what naturally happened is that I started to list some tools I use.

So why are tools so important? Let's start from the origin of this passion.

Since I was a kid, I had a propensity for manual activities, I loved Lego and Meccano, plus I remember my father always bringing me to help him with various electric, hydraulic and all kinds of manual jobs. I quickly realised how using the proper tools can make life much easier: tighten a nut with the right wrench, rather than with some plies, and the job will be much easier; use a tractor to plough the land: it will be much faster than doing it by hand.

Once my passion for computers started to grow, firstly driven by my interest in videogames, I quickly realised that I was using an amazing tool (the computer itself), full of many other tools (the various software items and its peripherals) that were just waiting to be used correctly.

My approach has been the one of a kid that didn't know any English at the time, but thanks to a lot of curiosity, I tried every single menu item. To help me I had a small English dictionary at my side, and step by step I managed to uncover step by step all the possibilities of the toy I was given. This meant for sure getting to know it in-depth, but it implied the investment of a lot of time, and it was fine as I didn't know better ways to use it back then.

In this IT environment, I found that there were ways and ways to do things: you can use the long way - for example, right-click and click on "copy", then right-click again and click on "paste" to duplicate something - or you can use the keyboard shortcuts and save 70-80% of the time.

Well, after a few decades of experience, I have gathered a fairly broad knowledge of the tools that helped me automate or shorten most of the actions at the computer. Having also served a good number of customers in this field, I also understood what kind of tools are most likely to be used by a larger audience, and here I am advising the ones that I like the most.

So here comes my advice: get to know what tools are available to help in the field you're working, and test them, use them a few times just to see how you weel with them. Avoiding to get stuck to the "comfort area" is quite important - I've seen already too many website editors that were using MS Paint to edit images because of the lazines of using any more proper graphic tool. Spending some time to learn those is definitely worth the effort.

Once you realise that a tool is essential to facilitate your work, it's a good idea to dive deeper into it and learn its additional functions. One kind of tool that many people use are spreadsheets: for example, MS Excel or Google Sheets. They have many ways to be used and for sure, learning some basic functions and trying to resolve issues in the "smart way" rather than doing the manual labour is always a good investment of time. We all know that there are plenty of boring books to learn this, but the availability of interactive or video tutorials is amazing.

A good way to ask for tips, learn and interact with other people that are having your same aim is to frequent communities that focus on that particular tool. There are plenty of those communities on different platforms (forums, chat systems, social network pages), and with a quick search, you can generally quite easily find and join them. There you can not only learn but also teach about something you've learnt. And doing it feels great!

Also, don't be afraid to pay some small sum of money if that will allow you to learn a dedicated skill in a short amount of time. Some websites offer online courses of any level and length, you can check them in this post.

The idea is to get away from the habit of using the first Google search result to find out how to do something, to have a more structured approach instead and understand a bit more what's that you're doing with the tool you are using.

Spending time in this kind of learning should be something constantly prioritised in anyone's schedule. Learning is important for our brain, and you never know when what you learn will come in handy - learn a trade for a rainy day (the Italian saying is like impara l'arte e mettila da parte).

Part of this continuous learning should be a language (that is a tool for communication). If done smartly, this can lead to a reasonable level in a couple of years, even if only dedicating 15 minutes a day, plus watching movies/series in the original language and having conversations (again, find communities).

As a final point, it's always good to find out if alternatives are available for the tools you're using. Being aware of what is important as there may be changes in the market that can make your tool slowly become obsolete and put you in a situation where you're not competitive anymore.
Generally, if you're good with a tool though, you'll be easily capable of adapting to equivalent tools (If you're good with Photoshop, it will not take that long for you to use GIMP).

This adaptability is important, especially when in the professional environment. Often companies use tools that are different from the ones you're normally used to. I've seen people struggling for years because they were used to using Outlook and didn't want to use Gmail. Or, before that, people that used to the Office 2003 interface, changed with Office 2007, felt really disrupted for this lack of flexibility.

The good outcome often comes from your network: discuss the tools you're using with others, share your opinions and look for more so that you can broaden your view, a bit like I'm doing on this page of my website.

Please feel free to share with my opinions on the tools I use and tell me the ones you use! :)

References and useful links:

• My favourite tools: Davide Biasco - tools