You Can’t Buy More Skill

We live in a time when there are more productivity tools than ever. Notion, Craft, Todoist, Evernote—the list goes on. Each one promises to be the system that finally makes us more efficient, more organized, more productive.

And here’s the thing: I love trying new tools. I’ve tested more of them than I can count. They’re impressive, well-designed, and in many cases, genuinely helpful. But lately, I’ve been asking myself a harder question: do I actually need them?

Because the truth is, all of these tools are just enhancements—or replacements—for things we already have in front of us. A calendar. A notebook. A simple to-do list.

When I was younger, I remember shopping for a new firearm and my father would always say something like, “You can’t buy more skill. Just concentrate on getting better with what you already have.”

That’s stuck with me. It’s not really about guns, though—that’s just the metaphor I was handed. The point is universal:

You don’t become more capable just by switching tools. You become more capable by mastering the ones you already have.

So before you jump into the next app, the next workflow, or the next system, ask yourself: are you really missing something? Or is it that the tool you already have could do the job, if you pushed yourself to learn it more deeply?

There’s nothing wrong with upgrading when you hit a true limitation. But skill always comes before software.