Thinking more about the job site metaphor, another area where there is a lot to learn is around tools.

I love to tinker. Can I optimize my development environment, my IDE, my coding practices/packages/languages? I think a lot (probably too much) about the tools to do my job. There is an upside to some of this, because better tools can make things easier. But better tools won’t do the job for you. The tool is still just the thing that you use to do the job. I still need to write the code, generate the graphs and tables, and write the papers that I submit. Some amount of time devoted to making sure I’m up to date with the tools needed to do the job well is required, but don’t let that search for the perfect hammer keep you from hitting nails.