Finding time to be the best that you can be, and give yourself the best tools to get you there is a worthy goal for each of us. However, as many of us may have learned the hard way, striving for excellence is not the same as striving for perfection.
This holds true in many areas, and it’s no less true when thinking about the tech tools that we use to make our work lives easier.
On Monday when I was blogging about Evernote, I checked back over some earlier posts where I had written about other helpful technological tools. One of the things that struck me was just how many great tools there are out there … and how frequently they change and new ones appear!
If you take a look at Twitter, just as an example, there are hundreds upon hundreds of applications that are aimed at making the Twitter experience easier, more accessible, and more fun. Just think of the number of Social Media Dashboards there are. Names like HootSuite, TweetDeck, Seesmic, Tweet Grid, TweetVisor, and Nambu come to mind, just to name a few.
Each of those tools offers a wide range of capabilities and each is continually tweaking and improving its software. Each is striving to constantly adapt, broaden its market and make its product more appealing and popular.
The sheer volume of helpful tools clamoring to make themselves useful to us can be overwhelming. Not only that, but if you are someone who likes to be ahead of the curve and are constantly on the lookout for the best or the latest or the most popular, you can eat up an awful lot of precious time on that.
So, how can you manage this? Well, my advice is to always keep your eyes open. When you see the “next best thing,” don’t be too quick to jump on the bandwagon and drop your trusty old Twitter Dashboard for the new one that does EVERYTHING!
Don’t just look at the features. Consider, too, the time it will take to learn and get comfortable with this tool. Also consider how YOU work. If you aren’t someone who does a lot with mobile devices, do you really need to jump to a new tool because it is totally integrated with the Android or the iPhone?
If you’re thoroughly familiar with HootSuite, but are intrigued with a new feature that Seesmic Desktop has just announced, perhaps you should add a clip about it to Evernote so that you can check it out some time at your leisure. If it really looks like it’s going to add something significant to your online work, or save you a great deal of time, then go for it. Otherwise, my advice would be to continue to do what you’re good at, not changing it until something that offers a really BIG improvement comes along.
Bottom line? Investing your time in becoming adept with whatever tools you use is going to serve you much better than continually “upgrading” and having to learn new applications. The best isn’t always going to be what you need.
How do you approach the newest and best? Do you find yourself changing tools a lot? How do you decide? Drop me a line to let me know how it’s going for you – I’d love to hear how you manage it all!
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