There’s much to be said for using a well-made tool, whether it’s a sharp saw, a strong chisel, a mechanical keyboard, a sturdy van, a light and compliant bike. Whatever it is, when it comes to evaluating tools, their quality can really be measured only by one thing: How well did they achieve the job they were hired for.

As the saying goes, a person doesn’t buy a drill because they want a drill; they buy a drill because they want a hole.

The same is true of software tools, but those have an insidious side to them: some software tools invite massive amounts of customisation to “improve their effectiveness”. A text editor like Neovim, for example, promises to allow you to write “at the speed of thought”, and offers so much customisation that it can feel like a blade you can sharpen indefinitely.

That can be a trap: blades rarely need to be infinitely sharp. After a point, you’ve traded your job as a carpenter for a job as a sharpener.

The tool must be used. It doesn’t matter how perfectly your drill fits your hand if you’ve never made any holes with it yet.

Most people who have worked with me for long will know that I love to point out when people are “painting the hammer”, or spending more time tweaking the tool than using it. As with most things like this, every accusation is a confession. I love painting hammers. It’s why I love the phrase so much: it’s a constant reminder to ensure I stop painting at some point and start hitting.

In the last few years, though, I feel like I’ve gone too far the other way. I pushed deep into the “just find the best tool and use it as it comes out of the box” way of working. Zero customisation, the ability to use the tool as designed, rather than constantly tweaking it to be just so. This has a number of benefits, not least the insurance of being able, if needed, to instantly replace the tool and be comfortable (and productive!) with the replacement immediately.

However, I think I’ve missed something. I’ve missed a key component to tool effectiveness, one that I only really noticed in its absence.

A blunt blade is useless, so to be effective it must be honed. It must be sharp. It must be “functional”. There are other functional improvements that can help increase its effectiveness too: the ergonomic handle on the saw, the addition of a second handle to allow the application of force in just the right balance.

But a saw on its own doesn’t cut anything. The user of the saw must also be effective. They must also be functional, knowing how to use the tool effectively.

Even so, I believe there’s still something more, something else that drives effectiveness.

Given two saws of equally peak functional effectiveness, and a user of the saw who is skilful, there can be something about the first tool that still gives it an edge over the second when paired with that user.

The first is the tool their spouse gave them. Or maybe it’s the one they apprenticed with. Or maybe it’s the first one they made by hand, or the one that their kid painted for them.

The missing component is joy. When a tool is joyful to use, it becomes more effective. It does so not simply because the user’s skill, say, is increased on each use, but also because the user is more inclined to use the tool in the first place. Which means they’re more inclined to practice, find better ways to wield it, and simply get more done with it.

It becomes the reason to do that job they’ve been putting off.

So, while we should be careful of spending so much time painting the hammer that we forget to swing it, perhaps just a little paint, in just the right place, can make us seek out new nails to hit, just for the fun of it.

Joyful tools are effective tools.

Consider that when you sit down to work: what small thing could you add (or remove) that would make you smile the next time you visited the task?