I recently read an interesting blog post, Good Tools Are Invisible. I think it makes some good points about the difference between feeling productive and actually being productive, but I think it misses what makes a tool particularly effective in the first place.
Bill makes the argument that real productivity comes from a tool that stays out of your way as much as possible. All the hours spent reading the manual and tweaking your configs and browsing the forums are hours that you aren’t spending on doing the work. Perhaps this is true for some people, but for myself it doesn’t hold up.
The most precious and finite resource is my focus and my motivation. If those things are on my side there’s almost nothing on my todo list I can’t knock out in a couple of hours. Most of my software projects aren’t actually that long, I could type them up in nano no sweat. When I fail to get something done it’s rare that there isn’t enough time. Projects get put off and abandoned because they frustrate or bore me usually.
A tool that is interesting and noticeably pleasant keeps me on task, which is ultimately more important than whether it makes me more productive. That a tool is enjoyable to use is a function of some of the things from the original blog. A good tool should have defaults that anticipate a user’s need and doesn’t bog them down with obvious questions. A good tool is reliable and minimizes needless complexity. A good tool reduces toil. But I think that good tool is not boring to use, and trying to make it invisible often makes it forgettable as well.