know your tools
Being a musician and a photographer means I’m a gearhead. And that means I read a lot of gearhead forums on teh intarwebz. Most gearheads are very concerned about their gear not being good enough, that they need a new camera or a new amp or whatever someone is selling.
My response is – know your tools. Learn to make the best of the tools you have before upgrading them, whether it’s a camera or a synthesizer or even something like an address book. And when it’s time to upgrade, you should seek to address specific, well-understood limitations of your existing tools. And rather than treating limitations as a need to upgrade, try to be more creative with workarounds and alternative solutions.
The endless upgrade treadmill is one of the curses of modern technology – and marketing. And worse, most devices work so poorly in some way or another than upgrading is just opening yourself up to harmful and potentially activity-fatal flaws. The expense and effort associated with upgrading a tool can often be better spent taking better advantage of the software or hardware you already have.
A variant of this is overbuying when getting into a field. For example, digital cameras are made more to a price point than a feature point. I sometimes see people with $2000+ cameras using them like a point-and-shoot because they have no idea how to operate any camera, much less the fancy one they bought! I tell folks looking for a camera that if they cannot state in clear sensible words why they need a better camera than a Nikon D40, then they need a Nikon D40. They have no idea why they need better – but somehow, bottom of the line can’t possibly be good enough. A $500 D40 and $1000 worth of better lenses, books, and lessons is a better investment than a $1500 camera, at least for a newbie.
Software is the same deal. People overbuy, or try to upgrade their way out of their own ignorance. Learn to use what you have!