Tool Development Capacity

I became aware of my interest in the provision of tangible and intangible tools to the helping professions when working through Richard Boles excellent book (with annual updates) called What Color Is Your Parachute?

His assumption was that in this day and age, everyone will either get "thrown out of the occupational plane" or will "jump out" at some time or other and will need some sort of "parachute" to break the fall. His book is an excellent one, with an ingenious premise. He took the huge dictionary of Occupational Titles which lists every job and occupation and stripped out their table of Contents. The table of contents is classification structure for the jobs, and uses three main headings:

1. jobs dealing mainly with people
2. jobs dealing mainly with ideas or data
3. jobs dealing mainly with things.

He then used the sub-headings of these categories in order to create a listing of skills which are typically required in each of the three types of jobs. He had his readers think of seven stories from their own life in which they did something (anything) in which they saw through some idea to completion and felt good about the experience. The stories can come from any area of life. He then had the reader take the stories one at a time and check off any of the fifteen or so skills in each category if that skill was used in successfully completing the task. Gradually, as each story is considered, a profile of the "transferable skills" used by the reader living successfully is built up, along with a profile of skills which are not used very much.

Boles uses a variety of other inventory exercises, and at the end consolidates them into a preferred working situation. One of the main things which emerged for me was just how much I used tool making as a tactical level capacity for carrying out tasks.

Quite some time ago, there was a young ten-year-old boy who looked after my makeshift Greenhouse while I was away on a trip. His dad told me later that when he came home one day, his comment was "If there is an easier way to do something, Stu will find it". That sums up my interest in tool making. I am interested in easier ways of doing things, both for myself and for others.

Many of my tools are related to data management. I believe this is because I need to chunk data in order to be able to use it without being overwhelmed by it. Large quantities of data do not help me live, but I find I need the detail when it is an appropriate time in order to complete tasks successfully. One way I deal with this data-overload is to modularize it and make access to it fast and easy. The modular nature of databases, the Internet, and hypertext have great appeal for me because of their capacity to hold great amounts of data in "hidden" but easily accessible form. Structuring the data is the most important part of the task for me, as it is the key to rapid retrieval. A poor index is worse than no index at all. The structure must emerge from the data itself, in order to be intuitive in its flow.

It was an important discovery for me that tool making was a process I used for carrying out my work; it was not the work itself.