Don't be cheap with your tools

What do you do for a living? What tools do you use to work every single day and how much progress could you do if you'd have better tools at your disposal?

Those are the kind of questions I asked myself before deciding to buy a new computer. Games were another reason - I really wanted to play new games and at the highest settings as well, but work was the main priority. I wanted something good enough to not limit me any more when it comes to the software I use.

After around half a year of work, I finally got that computer, and I can't be happier about it. It has everything I ever wanted, I'm not limited by the hardware any more and I can basically use any software I want without everything lagging and working really slow.

But because of all the money I spent on this tool that I use to work every single day, some people criticize me for my decision, especially my family, telling me I should have purchased something more practical, like a car.

Now, I understand that kind of mentality and I'm sure some of you had it as well at least once in the past. If you ever saw an Instagram celebrity purchasing the latest phone, you probably asked yourself why that person spent money on that when they already had a great phone.

Here's the reason - you need, no matter what others say, to invest in the tools you use to work with every day. In a lot of cases, the quality of your work is improved by the quality of your tools.

In my example, I work on design packages every day and I also write articles. The second activity doesn't really rely on me having a good computer, but the first one does. I can finally create two or three design packages a day in less than one or two hours, because my computer doesn't struggle when it comes to working in Photoshop any more.

Besides that, now I can finally learn new things, like how to use Blender, something impossible to do on my old computer, since it couldn't even run that software.

When it comes to the Instagram celebrity, the quality of his or her photos is the most important part when it comes to what they do. They take selfies or they take pictures of all kind of things - that's all the content they create. They need to make sure the quality of those pictures are the highest possible.

Let's take another example, something completely different - an artist. We can all agree that a person who is great at drawing can always do something amazing with just one pen and a piece of paper. There's no need for that person to buy anything else, right?

Not really.

Sure, pen and paper may be enough in some situations, but let's say that person wants to add some color to the drawing - everyone can buy some crayons or whatever at the local market, but those are fairly bad, and you can't always get good results with them.

That's why you see artists purchasing markers and all kind of things they use to color their drawings with that cost hundreds of dollars. Yep, hundreds of dollars for a few markers. It may seem expensive for us, but for the artist, that marker can improve the quality of their drawing by a lot.

It's the same with digital art - sure, you can work with a small tablet made for drawing, one from Wacom for example. However, buying a big tablet, that offers you all kind of fancy features will not only make your work a lot easier, but it will allow you to come up with better products, no matter how much that tablet costs.

No matter what you do, don't be cheap when it comes to the tools you use. Sure, you can do just fine without the latest and best tools on the market, but if you can use them to come up with even better products and to make more money or get more exposure because of that, then why not do it?

Buy the tools you need, stop worrying about money and work on what you need to work. In time, you'll get your money back, and the quality of whatever you do is a lot more important than saving some money so you can drink coffee more often or get out with friends.