I changed this tool for that tool and it changed my life

TLDR: I didn’t, and it didn’t.

There’s a certain kind of headline that keeps showing up in my feed. By clicking the title of this article, I’m guessing you’ve already seen them. This week it was…

I replaced Notion and Obsidian with this snappy tool and it exceeded my expectations

My brain knows that it’s clickbait and by reading it I’m going to end up spiralling into yet another world of technological pain, but I can’t help it. I’m an absolute sucker for them. These writers don’t just know what I want - they know what I need. I need new technology. I need to believe I’m ahead of the curve, surfing productivity waves while others are still inflating their armbands. They seek out my most base desires as a geek. They excite me.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Gen X geek. I grew up on three terrestrial channels that shut down at midnight, with a thousand 24/7 channels just around the corner. Privacy to talk to my girlfriend meant stretching the phone cable into a cupboard. And the bright lights and loud pew-pews of the arcade were slowly being piped into bedrooms via rubber-keyed computers and primitive consoles. Change was constant. Technological growth was exponential, and I wanted to be a part of it.

So my entire life has been a constant fight of “must adopt” technologies. I was always the first. The first of my friends to move from a BMX to a computer. The first to study Computer Science. The first to beg my school for computer related work experience. I even campaigned at university for my electronics course to allow a computer programmed dissertation. I was the first of my friends on the internet. The first to develop web pages. And the first to buy all my Christmas presents on this new-fangled site called “Amazon” (which incidentally everyone teased me for). I even mortified my wife when we married in 2004, by insisting that we were the first couple in our friendship group to have an online gift list. A move that did not go down particularly well with my technophobic in-laws.

So now, when I see a headline like “I tried this new browser and it’s amazing”, I’m immediately triggered. The addict in me starts sniffing out a new fix.

But when reading an article about swapping Obsidian and Notion for yet another new tool, I rarely stop to think that last month it was...

I moved from Google docs to Notion and it doubled my productivity

And the month before that..

Why I’ll never use Notes again, now that I’ve found Obsidian

It’s the same breathless cycle, repeated monthly with a new logo. Like musical chairs for note-taking. Except nobody’s sitting down, and everyone seems faintly exhausted.

A few months ago, I fell for it again. I moved half my life into Notion. I’d seen the screenshots. I wanted to be That Person - the one with the beautiful dashboard, the linked databases and the synced calendars.

Ever since I’ve spent hours setting up dashboards, fiddling with icons, watching tutorials, trying to make it all feel intuitive.

And it almost has. But the truth is, I’ve barely scratched the surface and yet now I’m already considering cheating on it with a cheap harlot younger model.

This is the part the articles rarely mention - the messy in-between. The hours lost to rearranging building blocks and migrating data. The nagging voice that says, “Keep going, this time it’s going to be the one”.

Do it.

You know you want to.

Just one more. It’s going to feel good.

But here’s the thing: it never is The One, and it never entirely feels amazing. At least, not for very long anyway. Almost always I end up spiralling into a world of Google searches that are something like “How can I use xx tool with xx tool”. Which, predictably, leads to a world of hacks and add-ons.

The truth is, the tool is just a tool. If your ideas are a mess, no interface will magic them into order. If your focus is scattered, no productivity hack will glue it together. And if your life is in flux - changing jobs, changing priorities - your system will wobble. And that’s okay.

I’m still using Notion. Sort of. I haven’t found anything better yet. But I’m also trying very hard not to look. Because I’ve stopped believing that the next tool will change my life. Not until I’ve taken the time to actually learn how I work.

I need to figure out what I need - not what someone on Substack says I should want. What helps, what gets in my way, and what it is that I’m really seeking. And maybe this time even stick with something long enough to know for sure that it’s not the right tool.

But of course, that kind of headline doesn’t get many clicks.

I stuck with a tool I didn’t fully understand, and eventually it kind of made sense.

Not quite the same ring to it.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you too have a new technology addiction. Do you fall headfirst into every new tool that promises salvation? Do you succumb to your dirtiest digital desires the moment a slutty new app flashes its ankles?

Tell me I’m not alone.