Dancing with tools
How good are you at Google Sheets?
Can you write a query? A filter? Do you know how to install add-on tools to trim extra cells or create a mail merge? If you wanted to learn those things, do you know how to find out how?
It’s an interesting litmus test.
Sheets is free. It’s not particularly difficult to use. You can explore it in private, with no fear of screwing up. And it’s widely applicable to just about any career or community work you might choose to do.
The teenager across the street is far better off teaching herself Sheets than she is doing whatever busywork they’re handing her during the day.
If you get good at a type of technology, you’ll find yourself using it often. On the other hand, if you decide that you’re somehow untalented at it (which is nonsense) or don’t take the time, then you’ll have sacrificed leverage and confidence that were offered to you.
Of course, it’s not just Sheets, or the web, or even computers. It’s a posture of possibility when it comes to the tools we’re able to use.
We can ignore the tools that we have access to. We can fear them. We can understand them.
(And, after we understand them, we’re able to hire someone else to use them on our behalf.)
We can even master them.