Ways to distinguish yourself #97 Use power appropriately

By Rajesh Setty on Sun 22 Jan 2006, 6:18 PM – 1 Comment

How much power is really required to do what you need to do?

First let me start with a personal example:

There is a sense of disbelief when I explain to people that the sotware I use most to write my blog posts is notepad. Most of what you read here has been first written in notepad, copied and pasted into the blogharbor application.

There are several reasons for my fascination with notepad. Here are a few:

a. notepad is an extremely light applicatoin. Takes less than a second to launch.

b. With notepad, what you see is what you get.

c. No unwanted formatting suggestions. I am in total control and nothing gets modified without me wanting to modify it

d. Since it is a lightweight application, it consumes less battery power on my laptop.

I write my blog posts in notepad and save each one of them on the desktop. When I get connected, I open each file, copy and paste the content (format if need be) and take the post live. Once this is done, I can just delete the notepad files from the desktop.

Here is the point: While there are far more powerful applications on my laptop, for what I need to do, I may not need them. The world view may be different. People around you may urge you to use the “best” available out there to get your job done.

The reason I urge you to re-visit this temptation is that the “cost” of using the “best” out there may be a lot higher than using what is really required. Do you really want to pay that cost for the best when you really need only 5% of what the best has to offer?

Summary: Use power appropriately. There is usually a cost associated with power. If you don’t need all the power, you don’t need to pay all the costs.

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