Peter Booth has a special tool for bending pipes: it belonged to his grandfather, it’s a bit battered, but it works. “It’s a bit of pride, a bit of history, and I’m always showing that tool off on social media,” he says.
Booth, like his father and his father before him, is head of the family’s plumbing and heating firm GV Booth, based in Loughborough. “As often as I can, I will bend my pipe rather than use joint fittings – you get a feel for the tools, they feel right in your hand and they’re not easily replaced. If you’re a professional, having good tools is part of working faster, more efficiently and doing a better job.”
The popular idiom holds that a bad worker always blames their tools, but perhaps the opposite is also true: that a good worker will always give them credit.
Having the right kit helps you signal to yourself your intention to do a job well. And it can certainly make it more pleasurable to get on with your work or business admin. In short, if we have good tools, we’re more likely to look forward to using them.
Environmental psychologist Anicee Bauer, who has worked with the Amsterdam-based design agency D/Dock on its “healing offices” concept, says that one of the agency’s graphic designers swears by a particular pen. “It seems that ideas flow out of him faster and better if he is able to sketch with it,” she says.
Designers and writers can get famously attached to certain pens or pencils. For example, James Dyson once claimed his most essential gadget was his Staedtler engineering pencil. And Roald Dahl only wrote with a particular type of pencil, on yellow legal paper.
These attachments give a clue as to why having certain tools can sometimes feel so potent: it isn’t always about their inherent quality or ability to do a job – rather, it’s often more to do with the signals they send. “I can’t tell for sure if it really matters what pencil someone uses,” says Bauer, “but I could imagine that it does make a difference regarding the feeling of comfort and sense of attachment.”
More crucially, the right gear can help reinforce our resolve to do our best work, which is why, perhaps, many of us are happy to splash out on top-end toolkits, stationery and desk lamps.
Of course, when it comes to ergonomics, the value of our workstations and chairs is more tangible. “We do know a little bit more about office furniture,” says Bauer. “Sit-stand desks, for instance, give you control and the opportunity to stand when you want. So this definitely makes a difference.”
Indeed, a study published in the BMJ last year found that when people were encouraged to use a height-adjustable standing desk and move more, they did their jobs better and felt that their quality of life improved.
Stephen Bowden, a chartered ergonomist who works for business consultants Morgan Maxwell, warns against investing thousands of pounds on workspaces and specialist equipment before discussing and observing your employees’ needs. “A lot of offices are based on fads and trends, and one of the big ones has been to focus on collaboration at the expense of concentration,” he says. “Even back in 2013, research by the architecture firm Gensler found that people were fed up with open-plan offices and wanted to concentrate.”
For others, the value of the right equipment is more closely connected to a tool’s inherent properties. Booth’s friend and fellow plumber, Jake Waller, from Peterborough, realised this only too keenly when £2,500 worth of tools were stolen from his van this year. “All of our cordless power tools, drills, cutting materials – everything you take for granted – was gone,” he says. “You don’t realise [the importance of each tool] until you turn up to a job and can’t complete it.”
Last year, Booth petitioned parliament with 40,000 signatories to raise the plight of tradespeople whose vans are stolen or plundered – leaving them up to £8,000 poorer in tools, some of which can be so old or unique as to be irreplaceable.
With so much monetary or sentimental value stored in them, tools – especially cordless power tools – need to be protected, says Booth: “Some [tools] can be a luxury, but with the basic handkit you do need to invest in decent quality gear because it will last you, and I definitely recommend getting tool insurance.”
Simon Ayers, chief executive of TrustMark, the quality scheme for tradespeople, stresses the importance of insuring your tools: “The value of these tools to their owners is often felt more in smaller businesses, for whom replacement, say in the event of theft, can pose a significant difficulty.”
Of course, some bits of equipment promise far more than they can deliver. “There’s a danger of spending too much,” Booth admits. “Sometimes there’s a gimmick. They say a new tool will do this, you buy it and then think: ‘Nah – I was better off before.’”
At other times, a shiny new tool isn’t so much pointless as ahead of its time. For instance, in the late 1990s, handheld personal digital assistants such as the PalmPilot promised to overhaul the world of work by replacing diaries, calendars and address books with pocket-sized handheld screens. While some early adopters made the switch, the wholesale transformation of our working lives only occurred many years later with the widespread use of smartphones and cloud-based apps.
The allure of shiny new tools is therefore always best weighed against whether there exists the required infrastructure or widespread take-up to make good use of them.
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