Tuesday Time-Wasting Tip-Off #5: Knowing Your Tools Saves You Time
Of course, you know the saying “A poor workman blames his tools.” Everybody knows that one.
My version is “A poor workman blames his tools. And so does a good workman. But they blame their tools for different reasons.”
Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Time-Wasting Tip-off. Today, I am expounding the desirable necessity in anybody that works with moderately complex tools, such as a CNC machine or a desktop computer, to really know the tools at their disposal, as well as they possibly can.
Know Your Tools
The quickest and easiest optimization you can do for yourself, if you use a computer for your daily work, is for you to really get to know your tools and understand how they work. The software installed on your computer enables you to produce a massive amount of creative output, but if you flounder when searching out a particular command, you waste valuable time and mental capacity hunting and pecking your way around the keyboard or browsing through the menu system.
To advance your art, to be better than the next guy, to really produce your best work from the tools you have, you need to be intimately familiar with them, it is not sufficient to just know how to operate your tools on a superficial level. The dumbest thing I have ever heard anybody say is “I don’t need to know how the camera works or what the lenses do. I’m the Director, I just need to tell the cameraman what his job is.”
Yeah… No. That is the attitude of the mediocre, it is the expression your boss says when he does not want to actually learn anything. You have probably heard it already when you are told “Don’t bother me with the details or explaining, just tell me what I need to know.” Well, the details and the explaining are what you “need to know” because without those, to quote a popular line, “you don’t know jack.”
The easiest and most immediate skill-up you can give yourself are keyboard shortcuts. Learning the keyboard shortcuts to Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Excel, Access or PowerPoint, Visual Studio, or a plethora of other packages will speed up your workflow and make you more productive. Common shortcuts are easy to learn (if you do not already know them off by heart) and there are commercial cheat sheets available to keep on your desk for almost any application you can think of.
However, learning the keyboard shortcuts is only a small part of the battle. Picking up a tutorial book, such as those available from Lynda.com on your favourite software packages, and working through each tutorial will introduce you to many of the features and aspects of an application that you are most likely not aware of. It is often an eye-opening experience to be shown several features that exist in the tools you use on a daily basis, that you were previously unaware of.
Alternatively, if you have the time and funds, take an advanced class in your software of choice. The basics of a package, especially in a field of software you are already familiar with, e.g. Maya, can be learnt quickly on your own time, but picking up the advanced features could take many months of experimentation. An advanced class, and I do mean “advanced,” will teach you many techniques, shortcuts and features in just a few short hours that you can directly apply to your daily work.
Just reading the feature set of a software application can highlight pre-existing features that may be new to you. With each release of software development tools that I use I spend a few minutes taking a quick look through the “what’s new” whilst waiting for the update to download and install. This quick review is often enlightening enough for me to begin several hours of investigation and begin tinkering with features. I have discovered a surprising number of useful features buried away in the dark corners of Microsoft Visual Studio or Microsoft OneNote, not because of a lack of documentation, but because the application’s feature set and the documentation is so vast and deep.
I am also not just advocating learning the tools that you currently use either, I strongly recommend that every week you spend some time downloading and trying out demonstrations and trials of other software packages, plug-ins and add-ons that directly relate to your field of expertise. Knowing that a tool is available, even if it is not of use to you right now, is important knowledge to have for when you do need it.
Whether your job is software development, art, game design, level layout, testing, production, writing, music, video or writing and reviewing contracts, your goal, if you do not have one already, should be to set aside time each month to spend an hour or two investigating software applications. You should investigate all of the new options, features and quirks of the current tools you use to do your daily job and locating and trying out other tools that are available, that can augment what you do.
Knowing your tools better than the other guy, lends you an air of authority to what you say and do. You receive a nice little ego boost when you can show your peers or boss something new (that they really should know anyway) and sets you up as the “go to guy” when it comes to questions on how to perform a task with a particular software package. Learning the ins and outs of a feature rich software application is not difficult, modern GUI operating systems have made the ability to tinker and play with a new application very easy on the part of the user, all you need is the willingness to learn and the will to dedicate a little time to advancing your art.