I used to have a job that involved swinging a hammer over and over again. I got pretty good at it.
Then the boss-man bought a minty-new Senco 650 air nailer for me to use.
At first, I could take it or leave it. After all, I was proud at the skill I gained in driving nails with a hammer, and the ways my muscles seemed to automatically steer the nail straight into a board without missing a beat even if things started going sideways.
But the air nailer sure was faster. And it only had one job, but it did that job fantastically. I started using it more and more.
Things very quickly got to the point where I was organizing my work to maximize my use of that new tool, which is to say: The tool began to have a role in controlling my actions.
It even began to control my emotions; I felt better and more accomplished after a day of using that tool than I did when I couldn't.
And this control accelerated: When the tool didn't work today or we ran out of the special coils of nails it used, then my focus didn't shift back to swinging a hammer. It instead shifted towards fixing the tool or finding more nails to feed into it.
The more I used it, the more powerless I was to avoid it. As time moved on, I got worse at swinging a hammer and increasingly dependent upon that air nailer.
(That's a true story. If I understand what addiction is, then I think I just described an addiction to an air nailer.)
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I used to have a job that involved swinging a hammer over and over again. I got pretty good at it.
Then the boss-man bought a minty-new Senco 650 air nailer for me to use.
At first, I could take it or leave it. After all, I was proud at the skill I gained in driving nails with a hammer, and the ways my muscles seemed to automatically steer the nail straight into a board without missing a beat even if things started going sideways.
But the air nailer sure was faster. And it only had one job, but it did that job fantastically. I started using it more and more.
Things very quickly got to the point where I was organizing my work to maximize my use of that new tool, which is to say: The tool began to have a role in controlling my actions.
It even began to control my emotions; I felt better and more accomplished after a day of using that tool than I did when I couldn't.
And this control accelerated: When the tool didn't work today or we ran out of the special coils of nails it used, then my focus didn't shift back to swinging a hammer. It instead shifted towards fixing the tool or finding more nails to feed into it.
The more I used it, the more powerless I was to avoid it. As time moved on, I got worse at swinging a hammer and increasingly dependent upon that air nailer.
(That's a true story. If I understand what addiction is, then I think I just described an addiction to an air nailer.)