Overcoming Tools Paralysis - How to Save $1000 a month selecting the right tools
Making decisions is a very integral part of our daily lives. Every day we are faced with choices. We ask ourselves questions like "What should I have for breakfast today?" or "What shirt should I wear?” Usually the answer is easy to find. However, more often than not we can't help but to over analyse or overthink, this is known as analysis paralysis. As business owners (or maybe you’re just generally thrifty) these questions can get even more difficult to answer when money is on the line.
In this day and age these kinds of questions are carried over to our computer and internet usage. The internet is expanding at such an incredible rate. It’s giving us so many choices that weren’t available before. In fact, it is reported that there were as many as 6,140 mobile Android apps that were released everyday on the Google Play Store during the first quarter of 2018.
Many of these apps are tools that are designed to help teach us new skills, improve our lives, and even manage our business. Though, some may come at a price, we cannot deny that some would be truly essential for a more efficient workflow. It would be great if we could just use all of the best tools, right? Now unless you have millions of dollars to spare, not everyone has that option, so we have to be wise about it, thus the question “Overcoming Tools Paralysis: How to save $1000 a month selecting the right tools”
Here are some useful rules to consider when choosing the best tools
#1. CHOOSE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED
With so many options out there, we can’t help but want to use everything available to us. However, this is something we should avoid. As much as possible, we should only choose what is essential to our current goal and current resources. This is so we can avoid getting ourselves in a mess of having 100 tools, but in the end we only actually needed 5 of those.
One common situation that happens is when we’re venturing into something new, whatever it may be, a new skill, a new business, or a new responsibility. We get tempted to subscribe, purchase, or try all the tools listed in all of the top 10 lists scattered online. We may think we need all of them immediately, but the truth is, we don’t really need them yet.
#2: USE THE FREE TOOLS FIRST
It’s very tempting to just go and purchase the number 1 most used tool online. However, we may not even be able to use it to its full potential, and end up paying more than we need. Fortunately, many tools offer free trial versions (just make sure you unsubscribe after the trial period!). There are also tools that are totally free – though they most likely won’t have all the features of the other more premium tools. We just always have to keep in mind what features we need and what we don’t.
A good example is when it comes to website building—something every small business should have in this day and age—and for that there are already countless website building tools out there. WordPress, SquareSpace, Shopify, Wix, and Weebly to name a few. Some of these website building tools come with free limited-time trials, some have completely free versions and some have only paid versions. If you’re looking for a simple website and you’re not really worried about having access to many features, then going for tools like Weebly or Wix will be the best option.
#3 UNSUBSCRIBE FROM TOOLS YOU DON’T NEED
There comes a time when we’ve fully accomplished one of our goals and suddenly we don’t have a need for one of the tools we’ve purchased long ago (or you just didn’t follow rule #1!). Don’t just leave it, remember to unsubscribe! Not only does it declutter your email, but it also helps avoid unnecessary charges. And make sure to unsubscribe from the free trials (if any). Since once your trial period is over, the tools would start charging you monthly.
In the end of the day, we shouldn’t get blinded by all of these apps available to us, especially for paid tools. We have to always consider if the task can be done without the aid of the tool in question, if it’s really necessary.
Consider your current skills and resources.
If you’re an expert coder then maybe you can just build your own website from scratch (if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy!), if you’re an expert accountant, maybe you don’t need all those accounting tools online.
If you’re an Excel/Spreadsheets master, then you might not need all those data visualization tools. It’s all up to you in the end, just remember to consider the effects of your decisions in the long run.
Doing these, you won’t have the need to spend hundreds of dollars on unnecessary tools and only use the ones you truly need to operate your business.
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