One of my favorite things is “kit”. Kit refers to a collection or set of tools for a specific purpose. If you are a doctor, your kit includes special instruments to understand how well a body is working. If you are a mechanic your kit is full of socket wrenches and bearing pullers. As a generalist, I have lots of interests. Each has its own kit and oh boy do I love thinking about which tools I’ll need for the job. I spend a lot of time researching, testing, and talking about kit.
A few years ago, my friend Sam Rosen wrote about what he keeps in his bag. It was really interesting not just to see what items are important to do his job while traveling but the stories and reasoning behind why each item stays by his side. Reading it made me think a lot about the things I use and what value the give me.
Over the years I’ve tried lots of different things. Sometimes items are added, other times I’ll phase something out. I used to carry a sharpie clipped to my shirt wherever I went. What works for some people, doesn’t for others. I think that’s one reason I’m so invested in building kit, is it’s an incredibly personal process.
I recently came across kit.com which is a platform for sharing all the knowledge that goes into people’s kits. It’s a great community of people sharing their experiences, and how they do the things that are important to them. I’ve looked at dozens of other people’s setups. There’s a lot of overlap of the things I’ve learned. Sometimes there are opinions that I couldn’t disagree more on.
The reason this is important is because sharing your kit allows someone who may be less experienced than you make a few big steps in understanding what tools for the job work best. Just like how Sam showed me some tips, many of which I’ve adopted, I hope that other’s can get inspired by how I do things, and maybe even share their findings so that I can make my kit even more effective at its purpose.
🖤 Geremy
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