Have you ever purchased a new tool and suddenly you wonder how you ever lived without it? I experienced this several times in the last few weeks. The first couple of times were coincidental, but then I started looking for ways to “retool” and, boy did I find several!It started a few weeks ago when I was vacuuming the swimming pool. The vacuum hose we had inherited when we moved here 5 years ago was getting worn to the point that one might assess that it was made entirely out of duck tape. Every time we would vacuum, little bubble would come gushing out of it and there was barely enough suction to budge a drowned ant. It was becoming pointless to vacuum at all so I decided to buy a new hose.
The next day I hooked it up to the skimmer and started to vacuum. I couldn’t believe how fast it was picking up the debris. I reached in the water and felt the suction and almost lost a couple of fingers! Suddenly my tool had become powerful again. I was able to completely vacuum the entire pool in under 15 minutes. I think that’s a record! The new hose was so airtight I think I could have sucked up a bowling ball.
Later that same week, I went to practice with my band. As I looked at my sticks, I started thinking maybe it was time to let a few of the worn down sticks go. I keep several more pairs of new sticks in the other pocket of my bag, so I decided to open up one new pair. Wow – what a difference. I can’t even explain it. I was getting a lot better sound from my cymbals and my snare even sounded crisper. All this because I “retooled”.
After these two incidents, I started looking for other ways to retool. Everywhere I went I would think about how I was doing things to see if there was a way I could “retool” to get better results. One such retooling involved email. We have two computers, three palms and two cell phones in our house. On top of that, we have about 10-12 email addresses between the 4 of us. Ok, most of them are mine, but still, it’s a lot to manage. Since our computers are “shared”, any one of us could find ourselves on any machine at any time. The retooling came when I returned home one evening to find my youngest child watching a movie on the laptop (MY laptop). I can’t seem to convince her to play DVD’s in the DVD player, so now my email is being held hostage by Barbie and the Magic Pegasus. Peachy. Why did I teach my kids how to use technology?
While I was sitting at the desktop computer pouting about not getting to my email, I caught a glimpse of the “Golden G” on the screen. You know the “Golden G”, right? – It’s Google. Everything they touch is golden. Suddenly, it clicked that I should check on the gmail account I set up last year and never used. Within a few minutes of logging in, I realized that this was my ticket to “retooling” email.
It took me less than half an hour to set up my preferences and all the accounts we use. I created filters so everyone’s mail is tagged and put neatly into their own folders. I added a bookmark and a link on the toolbar and -poof- instant email access from the desktop computer. As soon as Barbie was over, I booted my youngest into the bathtub and added the same links to the laptop. I then spent the next several minutes importing my address book and all of my saved mail. Now I have all of our email consolidated and we can check it from anywhere by logging into ONE account instead of several. Why did I wait so long to try this!
Retooling can be done in a variety of ways. Some suggestions may be to clean out a closet, go through desk drawers and toss any pens that no longer work, catch up on your filing, get you car tuned, sort and purge junk from your home or replace broken or worn equipment. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing until you retool. Retooling may take some time, but the payoff is huge.
Dictionary.com defines it this way:
retool: To revise and reorganize, especially for the purpose of updating or improving
Is it time to “retool”?
