And then you spend months trying to find all the different ways to use a screwdriver.
That’s a focus on form over function.
Using the tool has become a higher priority than accomplishing something for yourself.
That’s very different…
9
Function Over Form
Here is the whole tweet from above:
Imagine that I give you a screwdriver. And then you spend months trying to find all the different ways to use a screwdriver.
That’s a focus on form over function.
Using the tool has become a higher priority than accomplishing something for yourself.
That’s very different than handling the stuff you need to handle in order to get the life you want and, if it’s the most efficient tool for the task at hand, using the screwdriver.
If you don’t have a screwdriver, you might use a butter knife.
Using the best tool is great, but the real focus is getting the job done. Thats a focus on function over form. You want to get a screw out of the wall, a screwdriver will help you accomplish what you want to do.
That makes it a useful tool for you, right now.
Tools are useful when function comes before form.
They are a distraction when it doesn’t. If you’re spending all day trying to find ways to use AI, you’re spending all day avoiding the work in front of you.
If you’re spending all day creating new things to do just to have reasons to use a tool, you’re spending all day avoiding the work in front of you.
FUNCTION OVER FORM, THE STEPS
Step 1.
What do you want to accomplish?
Step 2. What is the next step? Step
3. What is the most efficient path to take that step. It may require or be made easier with tools.
Step 4. Start at step 2 again
Moving toward your goal > finding as many uses for new tools as possible
Our brains get hijacked by form all the time.
Especially when the idea of "more" creeps into the picture and hijacks our monkey minds. Some examples:
Over The Shoulder: Function Over Form
In hopes of getting people to think a little differently, I do my best to document the obvious cases of function over form and how a focus on form distracts people from getting what they actually want.
A thread of case studies. These are the day-to-day convos I have with people that are focused on growing their businesses and the way they are going about it is getting them further away from what they want. Plus, the solutions and thought processes. You can view the whole thing here
So we chase it.
We chase it because we are fearful of not having enough.
We chase it hoping for the euphoric high we think it will give us.
We are drunk on the idea of more, and it blinds us to the real objective:
The things that…
Function Over Form, How People "Scale" Themselves out of the things that actually work (5:41 YouTube video)
Remember what's important to you.
Your business may be the tool you are using to get something you want out of life. That's its function.
AI might help you remove limits or constraints on your path. That's its function.
In either scenario, there may be a better tool to accomplish the job.
The objective is to accomplish the job and to get what you want out of life, not to find more ways to use more tools. Or to make your tools sexier.
If I'm sitting around trying to make my hammer the sexiest hammer so everyone else is jealous of it...
and then getting jealous of other people's hammers, leading me to spend more time trying to make my hammer sexier...
...I'm really just being a dingleberry and getting nothing accomplished.
Replace "hammer" with AI, Twitter, Business, etc. It's just as ridiculous.
Onward.
Nic