A tool is an opinion on how to do something

A wise colleague once told me: ‘a tool is an opinion on how to do something.’ I love this quote, because it’s true. Different people have different preferences for how to do something, which are reflected in the tools they use.

Take note-taking. With some colleagues I had a nice “roundtable” on this topic today. We discussed our different ways of taking notes, the apps we used and our habits and routines. The chat channel was like a library of tools for organizing notes, bookmarking and writing. From Evernote to Notion, from Todoist to Apple Notes and from paper notebooks to Remarkable tablets, there wasn’t a tool that wasn’t mentioned.

So did we reach some kind of conclusion about what is the best way is to take and organize notes? No, of course not.

What tool is best depends not only on what you want to achieve, but also on what kind of person you are. Do you value open source, free form writing and independence of Big Tech? Than logseq might be for you. Do you like cross-device convenience, a bit of structure but not too much? Use Apple Notes. Like things even more simple? Just use pen and paper. But for retrieving information later, paper notes are horrible.

While we all used different tools and had different habits, there was one thing we agreed on: the success of any tool lies in the discipline of its user. How you use a tool is more important than what tool you use exactly.

But maybe that’s just my opinion.