Editor’s Pick: The Wrong Program

Versatility is what really makes the PC shine

THIS EDITOR’S PICK is going to be a little unorthodox, mostly because I’ve wanted to talk about this for a while, but haven’t found the right space to do it. Seriously, this is really going to annoy my art editor; I can see his emails arriving now!

So, I can get very obsessive over things. I’ve had numerous people analyze my life over the years, from family and friends to psychologists. Everything from my battles with depression and hypochondria to my passions for various sports, fitness, and things-to-do, and they’ve all come to similar conclusions. Basically, I pick things up quite quickly, and become very impassioned very fast, and that’s partly due to having a very low level of OCD. It stems from a desire for symmetry and order, which strangely helps with how I learn things.

Now, OCD’s no joking matter. It’s often misportrayed in the media as being a love of cleaning, or a desire to do something perfect every single time. However, it’s a condition that can make people extremely miserable. It’s a compulsion, rather than a desire. Your mind tells you that you need to do it this way, otherwise something awful is going to happen. Or worse still, it makes you worry and think about things that are distressing. That in turn can manifest itself as massive bouts of anxiety or fear, which have a hugely detrimental effect on mental health. And it’s all out of your control; you can’t just turn it off like a switch.

Where does this desire for order go in my world of computing? Well, I live and breathe Google Sheets. I find it a fantastic way to organize things, and oddly relaxing. For instance, in my personal Drive right now, I have 33 spreadsheets. I have spreadsheets for obvious things, such as monthly finances (with three separate variants for different scenarios for the next five years). Then I have less obvious spreadsheets, like ones planning holidays or for following my favorite New Zealand rugby team, and the ridiculous extreme, where I have worldbuilding spreadsheets for story-writing, where I’ll go into detail about book plots I’d like to write one day. And that’s just my personal Drive, not my work one.

Then there’s my use of Photoshop. This will make anyone who’s worked in publishing, CAD/CAM, or 3D design cry. Building CVs or PDFs? InDesign? Nah, Photoshop. Designing a bespoke wooden TV stand? Autodesk? Nah, Photoshop. Making an architectural plan with one pixel to one centimetre accuracy, to redevelop my garden, driveway, and home? SketchUp? Nah, Photoshop. You get the idea.

These programs are not designed to be used this way, yet they work perfectly for the job at hand for me. That’s the true brilliance of the PC. For instance, take our Photoshop tutorials in the mag. Although Sam is showing you a very effective way of doing something, he’s showing you his way. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s at least another 10 different ways of doing the same thing, with 10 different programs, all of which will achieve the same effect and quality. There’s no one right way of doing anything. So, maybe next time you start a project that you feel you need a particular new piece of software for, or perhaps you’re putting something off because you don’t have that piece of tech or the skills to use it, think about taking a product or program you’re already familiar with, and with a little outside-the-box thinking, I’m sure you can come up with a simpler, faster solution using it that fits your needs perfectly. $Free, https://drive.google.com

$10 per month, www.adobe.com