Spending money on tools
For some reasons, I never like the idea of buying an expensive laptop for my work. My thinking was that you should not spend money on things such as laptop, cellphone etc., rather you should spend money on things which will improve your life. I do basic staffs on my laptop, such as producing and editing word documents, browsing the web, watching movies - these types of works which does not require much processing power. So, most of the laptops that I have used, are low budget laptops with just enough ram and processor to do my works which is not much.
Recently, I decided to change my laptop. Hearing this, one of my relatives gifted me a laptop, a laptop of just my kind - with very little ram and slow processor. Initially, I liked the laptop, it was sturdy and small. But soon, I faced the limitation imposed by the slow 2gb ram and a Celeron processor. If I need to do several works simultaneously, i.e. multitasking, the laptop would start crawling. After a few days, I was fed up with the laptop. I also discovered another impact of this slow laptop - there was a mental side effect. After a few days, I realized that I was trying to stay away from the laptop. Whenever I thought of doing some work on the laptop, I would try to find excuses for not touching the laptop. As a result, the delivery of my works started to be delayed and, in some cases, some works were never completed.
After some frustrating time, I decided to buy a new laptop with more ram and a better processor. I opted for a ThinkPad which have 8gb ram and a Core i5 processor. Comparing to my previous laptop, it not just run, it sprints. Suddenly I started enjoying working again. It just made doing work great again.
This whole incident made me realize one thing. Your tools, which you need to do your work is very much an essential part of your workflow and have a great impact on the quality of your work. If you have great tools for your work, chances are those tools will give you some peace of mind and assurance which will ultimately help you to produce good quality work. But if you need to spend time waiting for your tools to respond and make it ready for work and then start the work, it might negatively affect your work. You are spending your valuable time on your tools.
For example, if you want to learn to play the guitar, you may think about buying a good guitar which will give you good sound. I am not saying that you need to buy a very expensive guitar, all I am saying is, you should think about buying a guitar which will give you better sound. If you buy a cheap guitar which does not produce good quality sound and you are stuck with it, you may lose interest in guitar eventually.
At the end of the day, I realized that spending on my tools improves the quality of work, which in turn, improves the quality of life. It is not always a waste of money, rather it is very important for productivity.