Creatives: Don’t Be Distracted By Your Tools

Creative people love great tools. I just bought a new HD display screen for my computer, so I get it. Michelangelo spent enormous time and effort to find the best materials to mix into paint. Great artists throughout history were obsessed with the right brushes, the best marble, new typewriters, fine musical instruments, and the latest motion picture film. Today, it’s technology and apps.

But here’s the warning:  It’s too easy to obsess over tools and technology instead of  actually creating your art.

I know writers with five or six writing apps on their computer and yet they’ve actually written very little. Filmmakers with the latest cameras with almost nothing to show for it. Musicians with incredibly expensive guitars who have yet to record an album.

You get it. The greatest artists in history wanted the best tools, and that’s important. But when they couldn’t get those tools, they still wrote on available scraps of paper, recorded music on outdated equipment, and painted with whatever they had nearby.

Make sure you’re not being distracted by the tools. In the end, few (if any) people will care about the kind of piano you recorded on, app you wrote with, or camera with which you shot the project.

The art matters more than the app.