The 7 Ways Clever Gadgets Waste Your Time
I am confident that if you are reading this, you love gadgets as much as I do. Gadgets of all kinds rule your life, at your computer, at your office, at your desk, in your kitchen, in your garage, in your workshop; you have so many gadgets to choose from and so little time to play with them all.
Now do not get me wrong, there are a lot of useful gadgets out there and several of them will certainly make you more efficient at what you do, more productive in your work, decrease the number of steps you need to perform, remove unnecessary manual labour.
But…
How many gadgets do you have that actually detract from your efficiency? How many gadgets do you own that you thought you should own only to find out afterwards that it is not what you needed and your once shiny, new gadget now languishes in your desk drawer or a storage box somewhere.
1. Multi-purpose gadgets are usually worse than a single purpose device
Combining two (or three, or four or five) simple and useful tools in to a single multi-purpose tool never yields a better solution. The combination merely creates a less-effective tool, no one tool as useful as it originally was.
Even the venerated Leatherman, beloved by geeks and System Administrators everywhere, is not as useful as a small bag of assorted tools.
2. Duplicated effort
Carrying more than one of the same gadget? Two cordless drills is one thing, carrying a BlackBerry and an iPhone is just a little bit OCD.
3. The simplest option is usually the better one
Notepad and paper beats pretty much every digital note taking gadget out there.[1] Circular saws with a laser guide just means you are watching the laser dot and not the blade taking off your fingers.
Interesting thought, are more accidents caused by power tools with integrated guide lasers than those without?
4. Improving an already established, very simple design
“We’ve always done it this way” is no defence but when it comes to simple, you can rarely improve it without adding just design fluff.
A hammer is a hammer, trying to reengineer it so that it is a more effective hammer is redesign for the sake of it. This is what Producer’s in the web world call a “creative refresh” and which you and I know as fixing-something-that-isn’t-broke-waste-of-time-used-to-justify-their-astronomical-budget.
5. Pointless gadgets that force you to change how you do things without conferring any extra benefit
Segway. Enough said.
Oh, you want more?
Okay, sure, the Segway — a neat concept combining a bunch of cool technology in an interesting way for a very high price tag.
Electric vehicles are downright awesome, let’s get that said right now, before all the Segway lovers get up in arms about their precious vehicle of choice.
I own an electric bicycle, an electric skateboard, an electric scooter, I have looked at an electric pogo stick, I am contemplating buying an electric off-road dirt bike within the year and as soon as Tesla sorts out the bugs in their vehicle I will buy an electric sports car too.
But a Segway?
Give me a break.
It does not change how you interact with the world or want to interact with the world. When I am riding my skateboard, I am engaged, I am active, I am interacting, I am controlling the ride. With a Segway, I am just a passenger. I am along for the ride, whilst someone else has all the fun. I am not “there,” there is no visceral experience of controlling or riding, it is boring. The fun lasts a few minutes and the novelty of a self-balancing vehicle wears off in about half that time. The Segway cannot do half of what my skateboard does, and it cannot do half of what my electric bicycle does.
At the end of the day, when the Segway has a drained battery and you have to push a 100lb brick, with a rolling resistance higher than my Land Rover, all the way home, I can still ride my skateboard or bicycle as they were meant to be ridden.
6. Increasing the number of steps
Gadgets that increase the number of steps you have to take to complete the task or activity than if you had done it with a different gadget, or even manually, are the epitome of worse than useless.
We were erecting some free-standing shelving at the office a while back, which required the use of both a Philips screwdriver and a regular flat head screwdriver. I got five shelves assembled and finished using plain old regular manual screwdrivers in the same time it took two people to assemble one set of shelving using a cordless drill. The cordless drill bit had to be switched out every couple of screws which slowed down the assembly, and some of the screws did not get used because the cordless drill would not fit in to the available space.
Tell me again of this optimal time management, your offer intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
7. Gadgets that require set up before use and clean up after use
My espresso machine cost about $300 and does a fantastic job of making great coffee. I use it about three times a day and when it finally breaks down, I will be buying another one just like it. Set up is minimal, and clean up is a snap.
Unlike the digital, computer controlled monstrosity at a client’s office that requires a service technician to come out and de-stick the grinder when someone uses Starbucks beans in the hopper. A bastardised device so insidious that it that requires no less than nine button presses displayed on a cascading two line digital display to determine what kind of espresso you would like, and after all that, you still have to actually make the espresso yourself.
Woe unto the next person comes along to make a simple coffee only to find you concocted something weird, and now they have to reset all of your digital manipulations and machinations so that they end up with coffee and not blackened sludge and milk all over the work surface.
Clean up of the device is a total nightmare, the filter baskets can only be hand washed, and at the end of every day, because of the amount of usage the device receives, all of the flow lines need to be flushed with warm soapy water and then rinsed out 20 minutes later.
With all this extra manual labour everyone goes through to get their coffee, I did a quick estimate and figured that it would be cheaper for the client company to just open an account at the local Starbucks.
Free bonus!
Yes, because I love you guys so much and because I know that the number seven has a stronger pull in a headline than the number eight, I am giving you a free bonus gadget category.
Right here, yours, for free, with no obligation, and I guarantee that if you are not completely satisfied with this bonus, you can return this entire article to me within 30 days for a full refund, is your bonus category of clever gadgets that waste your time in interesting ways.
8. Inconvenient gadgets
Laser level gadgets are awesome. Lasers and power tools, what’s not to like? And for the average job of putting up a shelf or hanging a picture they are totally useless. It takes longer to get the laser level out, set it up on the tripod, adjust the tripod legs to make sure the laser level is itself level. And after all that you have to find just the right position for the tripod so that you are not blocking the projected beam with your body, all so you can drill four holes in the wall for a shelf is a bit much.
[1] Except Microsoft OneNote. But even that application has its faults, and does not work as well as pen and paper for some things.