When CD burning first became popular, I was obsessed with getting a burner of my own. How cool would it be to make my own CDs? I could have my own mixes for car rides, and give them out to my friends.
That year for Christmas, my parents got me a CD burner. I hooked up the bulky beige box to our family computer, installed the software, and then realized – I had nothing to put on my new CDs.
I was so distracted by the idea of burning a CD, yet hadn’t really considered the circumstances – that I wasn’t really in a place to make use of such a tool. In fact, my first few CDs were basically wasted on a bunch of free .WAV sound loops I found online. My first few CDs were basically tracklists of Powerpoint sound effects.
Eventually I got some music and figured out how to use the thing, but it was an early lesson in the difference between expectation and reality.
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of a new piece of technology and the possibilities it affords. But if you’re not equipped to make use of that technology now—If you don’t have a specific problem to solve or use case to pursue—then it’s not worth devoting many mental cycles to thinking about any further. Buying technology for “What if” is a pretty quick way to end up in integration purgatory, and a finance team questioning your budget decisions.
Or, to put it another way, you have no use for a spindle of blank CDs if you have nothing to put on them.