There is an old saying in Chinse “工欲善其事,必先利其器”, which means if one want to good at what he is doing, he must first pick and sharpen his tools. This wise advice obviously still hold its value today. Using the right tool for the job will make your work much more productive.

One way to figure out the right tool is of course to learn from the professionals, the gurus, the ones that do it for living and prosper in the field. It used to be a well kept secret for many professions, you would need to go through many years of interns to learn from the masters. However, now with the internet, you might be able to just find out that online.

Here are several websites that do the interviews with professionals with their tools and environments.

They basically go through several simple questionnaire such as:

  1. What you do?
  2. What is your Hardware Setup?
  3. What is your Software Setup?
  4. What is your dream setup?

Some ask the questions about how to stay on top of thins such as emails.

I feel these quite useful especially when you are trying to start working on a new area or you want to fine tune your own working process. Of course, you would need to go through these with your own judgement. See if fit in your own style and work flow. The choice of tools is actually saying a lot about your personality and inclination in ways of approaching things. But these shared setup provide you some things to try out.

Any good learning start with mimic, isn’t it?

One thing I felt that could be improved is that these websites are most concentrated in technology sector (designer, developer, IT, etc) and mostly computer tools. It is not a surprise because these sectors are the ones that embraces the open culture most. However, if we could see more setups for the gurus in other field especially some old ones that not yet embrace internet, wouldn’t it be awesome?


Let me know your thoughts.

How to Learn From the Professionals?
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