Taking full advantage of the things you already own
Most of us like nice, new things. Whenever something new comes out we ogle at its features, wonder at how we could use them to our advantage, and then eventually buy the product. But how many of us take full advantage of the things we already own?
I’m sure some of you out there do a fantastic job of utilizing each and every feature of everything you own - but I know that I don’t - and I’d like to start trying. Here is a few examples of products that I think go under utilized by many people.
Oh, btw, I’ll be staying away from the obvious one, your computer. Ninety-percent of everyone I know with a computer uses it for “email and ebay”. The computer is the most under-utilized product of all time.
Here is another big one. Your digital camera. We have two digital cameras in our household, one for taking mostly stills or events or scapes, another for quick shots on the go.
If your digital cameras are anything like mine, they come with a fairly extensive user-manual that I’ve almost never examined fully. If there was a button on the camera that I failed to recognized, I’d take out the manual and look it up - but that’d be the extent of my reading of the manual. Digital cameras have tons of great features to afford you the best possible photos in any given situation. Obviously many digital cameras ship with a few superfluous features like automatically adding cute little frames to your photos, etc. - but more often than not - your digital camera has some great features that you are simply not utilizing.
Another under utilized tool would be your Tivo, if you have one. At least in my case, I rarely use Tivo for anything other than recording the shows I really like. Most of the time, if I really like the show, I watch it live and I have the Tivo in place for watching the same show twice. Eliza uses the Tivo much more efficiently than I do since she records more shows and her favorite football games each week - but what about the other 23 hours in the day that the Tivo sits there doing almost nothing? Could it be recording a few cooking shows to use as a guide for dinner that evening? The do-it-yourself painting show to let you know how to paint your kitchen? Or even the special on moths indigenous to the northeastern United States? Ok, maybe not.
Living room electronics, although not as common as things like digital cameras, also go under-utilized by many. What I mean by living room electronics is the combination of your television, dvd-players, and surround-sound systems. Thanks to retail stores like Best Buy and Circuit City, a fair amount of people do have surround-sound systems in their living rooms. Most of them consist of 1-price packages like a “Sony setup” or a “Bose-system”, most of which are crap - but yet they put out a far better quality sound than the two speakers in your TV.
Most of these speaker systems come with fairly detailed instructions on how to setup them up for proper acoustics in your home. Many of them have presets for specific media like DVDs, music on CD, and the sound coming through your TV. But yet most people simply plug everything in, turn the volume up to 11, and listen to a severely distorted version of the T-Rex getting pissed in the first Jurassic Park. At least that is what I do.
I suppose my point is this. If you’ve paid your hard-earned money for a product, maybe it’d be worth spending some time getting the most use out of it, before you replace it with a bigger, better version with more features you won’t end up using. I’m going to try to do the same.
[tags]digital cameras, tivo, life[/tags]
January 4th, 2007 at 10:01 am
[...] But have you ever found yourself being a follower of everything? I touched on this in “Taking advantage of the things you already own”, where people want the latest and greatest before they even know how to use what they already have. I’ve been guilty of this. But there is also the idea of the quantity of “things” you have too. Or the quantity of the interests you supposedly have. Do you have 1,000 hobbies? Or, perhaps you just have 1 but it changes every single day before you have a chance to fully explore the hobby you did yesterday? I think it is good to have a few hobbies, this way you can pick what you want to do today based on your mood - but having too many can lead you to never fully exploring any of them. [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
[...] Look through the garbage and find the instruction manual for your digital camera and learn to use it better. Go for a jog on a street that you’ve never been on. Knock on that neighbor’s door that [...]
September 6th, 2007 at 5:08 am
06 September 2007
Hi Colin,
You picked a fantastic topic to write about because NOBODY uses fully what they already have.
The few people who use, say, a mere ONE percent of what possessions, skills, or personal attributes they have, are currently running the world - in the sense of doing one hundred percent of what makes it go forward from day to day.
To start with a (probably) frivolous example, Dolly Parton made use of her personal attributes, and her skill (decorated her body to show it to advantage, and then allowed the public to hear her voice), and look how far she got with her one percent.
If you ask who is the best writer, singer or painter in the world today, in my opinion, nobody knows.
The best ones might be at home, agonizing about whether they are good enough to let anyone see them, or their work.
We only get to see the ones confident enough to give it a go.
Another example: a person who only knows how to push a broom, gets a cleaning job, perseveres, and ten years later, may become the owner of a cleaning company.
Meanwhile, university graduates, plagued by self-doubt, do not realize the value of their knowledge and advanced skills, may be looking on with envy and asking themselves: “If I’m so smart, why aren’t I rich?”
Like I said, you picked a good topic.
And I’m sure that if ALL of us used one percent of our abilities, advantages or possessions, the world would become a paradise for all to enjoy life, by using things we ALREADY have, and doing things we ALREADY know how to do.
Cheers,
Anna, from Australia