The device you’re reading from right now—the laptop, phone, or tablet that’s displaying this article—what made you pick it?

What about the web browser you used to load this website? It’s probably Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Why did you choose it over one of the others?

When you need to create a document, do you open Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Apple Pages? Something else?

Digital tools—both hardware and software—are essential to our daily lives. I’m using them to write this post, and you’re using them to read it. While we spend many of our waking hours interacting with them, most people don’t have a governing philosophy when it comes to choosing one digital tool over another. This is a problem, because over time, these choices can affect our lives in surprising ways.

You probably feel guilty already, and you’ve only read the title of this article. Well, there’s no need for that: we *all* know we should read more books. And we’ve tried before, reading consistently for a few days or weeks only to see our little [reading habit](https://jonathanvieker.com/3-reasons-to-start-reading-more/) sputter and die. But there’s hope.

It is very possible for the average person to become a serious reader—a person who reads good books and reads them consistently.

[caption id=“attachment_2309” align=“aligncenter” width=“740”] Marcus Aurelius, Stoic icon[/caption]

It’s pretty obvious that life doesn’t always go as planned.

This blog is all about personal development, and that means taking control over things like our habits, our attitude, and how we manage time.

But no matter how hard we work to become better at directing our own lives, the fact of the matter is much of life isn’t under our control. Every day, bad things happen to good people—good people like you.

A year and a half ago, I started getting rid of my stuff.

I sold or donated clothes, musical instruments, power tools, and an old vacuum cleaner. I gave away my first dictionary, a gift from my parents in 7th grade. Mom and Dad have always supported my writing, and this dictionary represented that better than anything else I owned. On the inside cover, my mom had written:

Some professional duties are straightforward. We know what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and when:

• deliver a status update at next week’s board meeting
• plan a gala for October
• teach three sections of Accounting 101 next semester
• give a presentation at an annual conference

Tasks and projects like this make up the bulk of our work. They may not be easy to complete, but at least we’re more or less clear on what we need to be doing.