Weekly Challenge: Is It Time To Replace Your Tools?

For the last couple of months or maybe even longer, I’ve known that my wireless mouse was about to scamper off to the the big cheese wheel in the sky.  Some days it didn’t want to connect to my laptop and other days it had clicking issues.  I fiddled with settings on my Mac thinking I could outsmart it and make it behave, but nothing ever worked for more than a few minutes.

The final straw came when the scroll wheel started to stutter and eventually stopped working altogether.  This is not a good thing when your profession requires you to be at a computer all day.  So I beat it on the desk a few times and lo and behold it submitted to the thrashing and worked for a few more days before the stuttering started again.  I knew I was beating a dead horse (ok – mouse) but I just didn’t want to take the time or spend the money to replace it. So I continued to frustrate myself by working with a tired tool that was at the end of it’s lifespan.

This weekend while shopping, I decided I might as well fork over the $18 for a new wireless mouse (same make and model as before).  I plugged it in this morning and OH MY!  I guess I did not realize what a difference there would be!  Not only can I scroll flawlessly now but I can click easier and everything seems to flow so much faster!  I feel like I have a brand new computer and all I did was replace the mouse!

Makes me stop and think what else might need to be updated around here to keep the juices flowing and stop hindering creativity.  I’m going to make this my weekly challenge because as I work this week I will be analyzing the way I do things to see if there aren’t a few things I can do to improve my productivity.

What simple things can you change to make your life easier?