It’s Not the Tool, It’s the Fit: Why Your Tech Should Work With You

When I was a junior in high school, I lost all my friends at once.
They’d played a prank on my dad — one that crossed a line — and the fallout ended our friendship. I didn’t get in trouble at home, but I was hurt and confused. For years, I thought it was just teenage drama.

But looking back, that season taught me one of the most important lessons I still use every single day: team design and trust.

You can’t expect the same thing from everyone — and you can’t give the same way to everyone either.
We all have our “buckets” of people: the friend who gives unfiltered feedback, the colleague who just listens, the one who helps you brainstorm your next big idea. Each person brings something different to the relationship and brings a different part of you out, but when we try to make one person (or one tool) do it all, things start to fall apart.

Years later, when I began leading teams and building systems, that old high school lesson showed up again. I saw how I was trying to make one tool — or one person — do it all. The frustration felt oddly familiar.

When I started working more deeply with technology, I realized I was doing the same thing I’d learned to do with people — grouping tools based on their strengths. The creative one. The structured one. The connector. The doer.

But here’s where most people get stuck: they choose tools by reading a feature list or watching a demo video.
It’s a lot like high school me trying to hold a friend group together that wasn’t meant to function that way. I was forcing fit instead of finding flow.

Features don’t tell you how the tool feels to use — or whether it aligns with the way you naturally work.

Before choosing a platform or app, I ask deeper questions:

• How do I like to work — fast and flexible, or structured and planned?
• Do I prefer visuals and flow, or lists and logic?
• Will this tool motivate me to create, or make me dread logging in?
• What’s my short-term goal — and will this still serve me six months from now?

Because the truth is, no one works exactly like you do — so no tool will either.

The right technology should complement your strengths, not fight them. It should work with you, not against you.

When your tools fit who you are and how you work best, everything starts to click. You stop fighting friction and start flowing — spending less time configuring, and more time creating.

Losing those friends hurt, but that lesson changed everything about how I build relationships — and systems. Whether it’s people or platforms, I’ve learned that trust and alignment matter more than trying to make something be what it’s not.

We already have enough things that pull us away from the work we love. The right tools — like the right people — bring us back to what matters. Don’t let technology be the thing that holds you back.

If this hit home, I’d love to keep the conversation going.
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Because when your tech and your personality are aligned, that’s when your business really starts to flow.