By Jack Baty in Workflow —

I have neither reduced, nor simplified

Bulletin board with cards reading "Reduce & Simplify" and "Use What You Have"
It's not as if I haven't been reminded of this every time I look up.

At the beginning of 2024, I had grand plans to Reduce & Simplify. I was also determined to use what I have. I've done neither of those things. It's November.

I tried for a while. Or rather, I tried a bunch of different times, which had the effect of making everything less simple. Instead of limiting the number of tools I use, I switched from one to another (in an honest but misguided effort to make things simpler). The result has not been the nice, clean, simple set of tools I had hoped for. Instead of having few dependencies and requiring little maintenance, my stuff is spread everywhere and littered with neediness.

As for using what I have, yeah, well.

I bought a new computer for my desktop, so now I have two machines to configure and maintain. I bought more cameras, because the 20-odd cameras I already had weren't enough, apparently. Two notebooks going at once was missing something, I guess, so I bought a third. And so on.

Maybe I'll panic before the end of the year and actually end up somewhere near where I intended, but I've already "simplified" things so many times that I've actually made things worse. The best way to make things simpler for me would be to stop changing things. It's had the opposite effect. I should probably just use what I have. Oh wait.

π