Brad Pitt’s Toothbrush

Brad Pitt’s toothbrush isn’t better than yours. King Charles III isn’t browsing a faster internet. Bill Gates doesn’t have a more powerful inbox.

This sounds wrong at first. Surely people at that level have access to something we don’t. Some edge, hidden in the tools. Most of the time, they don’t.

We’re not really comparing features. We’re explaining outcomes. When the gap feels big, it’s easier to point to equipment than behaviour. Better gear is a tidy story. It keeps the responsibility somewhere else.

So we wait. For the upgrade. The redesign. The moment when our setup finally matches our ambition. Until then, it feels premature to begin.

A better approach is to assume the difference is zero.

Tools improve quickly, then plateau. Moving from scraps of paper to a notebook helps. But the jump from a $5 notepad to a $50 moleskin rarely changes what gets written. The gain exists, but it’s not doing the work.

The edge isn’t the tool. It’s the person who keeps using it. The person who writes every day with a $30 keyboard beats the person waiting for the $300 one to arrive.

Start with what you’ve got.

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3 things that made me write this:

1. I found two desk lights in my cupboard. Bought them so I could start recording video but never did. They've been sitting there for eighteen months. The problem was never the lights.
2. Someone asked me what camera they should buy before starting a YouTube channel. They don't have a channel yet. They have zero videos. The real answer is the cheapest phone they own and the willingness to record something bad first.
3. I've been seeing a lot of posts comparing Claude and ChatGPT. Lots of people saying Claude is better. It might be. But both are capable of helping you do the work. The debate matters far less than actually using one.