I am a fiddler. No, not the kind with strings, I fiddle with my work setup constantly. Maybe it’s the inner geek in me, or maybe just the desire to maximize my working methods. Whatever is behind it I know it’s an obsession, and not usually a productive one.
I work at my computer over 8 hours a day, and I am constantly fiddling with my setup to make it “just a little more productive.” I swap the screen layout around, reconfigure core apps to display things a little bit differently. I try new utilities and programs as soon as I hear about them just in case one is that “killer app.”
My infidelity to a given web browser is legendary, as I swap them around with abandon. I may use Firefox one day, followed by Safari the next, and Google Chrome after the others. I usually use a different browser on OS X than I do on Windows. It’s a tinkerer’s heaven.
Being platform agnostic has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is it provides me with multiple operating systems to tinker around with. If I ever perfected one of my setups to the point it could not be further improved, I’d still have one or more OSes to fiddle with. It’s a rather brilliant strategy for an obsessive-compulsive fiddler.
The truth is — what is really productive is to leave everything alone. My system at any given time is pretty darn efficient, and I almost always spend more time with the fiddling than I gain by any improvements. I can honestly state that those weeks I just do the work at hand and don’t fiddle with my arrangements are generally my most productive weeks. They are definitely my most peaceful ones. Sometimes it makes more sense to just get to work, not try to make it better.
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