Evernote is my favorite note-taking app. I use every day to jot down ideas, save pictures of receipts, journal my thoughts, write new blog posts, and much more.
Up until a month ago, one of my largest digital notebooks was “Food and Drink.” My wife and I enjoyed sharing this notebook in Evernote to clip recipes from our favorite websites.
Evernote worked okay, but it was far from the perfect meal planner.
I wanted a system that would make shopping for groceries easier. My ideal digital cookbook would help us create a menu of recipes, and then combine all the ingredients into a single shopping list.
Evernote clearly wasn’t the right tool for the job.
So one weekend I finally made a point to browse the app store. And didn’t take long before I found exactly what I was looking for.
Paprika makes meal planning a breeze. It does everything I wanted and more.
In fact, the app was such a hit, that I couldn’t help but tell all of my friends and family about it.
But it also caused me to stop and think. Where else am I using the wrong tool for the job?
I had been using Evernote as my digital cookbook because I was familiar with it. Not because it was designed to make meal planning easier.
And the result was predictable. Meal planning was manageable but cumbersome.
However, as soon as I made the switch to Paprika, weekly meal prepping became much easier and more convenient. I now look forward to finding new recipes to try online, and grocery shopping is quick and efficient.
Sometimes we struggle to find a good solution to a problem because we jump in and get to work without first pausing to assess if we have the right tool.
Even then, the tool may not be the problem. Sometimes it’s the person using it.
Here are two questions to ask yourself before you get started on your next assignment:
- Am I using the right tool for the job? Or am I limiting myself to what I’m familiar with?
- Am I the best person to perform this task? Or could it be done better and faster if I step aside and empower someone else to do it instead?
Saving costs and being resourceful with what you have is respectable.
Learning a new skill and pushing yourself past your comfort zone has its place too.
But when all we have is a hammer, suddenly every problem begins to look like a nail.
Stay open to the possibility that there may be a better path forward.
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