The tool is the message

"The medium is the message."
– Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

How do tools change what we say and do?

As technology advances, our tools shift from merely assisting us to actively shaping our actions and thoughts.

Finding your voice amidst the AIs

Have you used an LLM to review your writing before? It's very difficult to use one and still come across as... well, you.

For example, I wrote a quick email to my subscribers. I said:

First, sorry! I should have probably let you know I wasn't planning to write by Saturday, not the following Monday!
So last week I was traveling for work doing Q2 planning. I had a blast, but as with all of my previous work trips and vacations, no time to write.

I posted it to ChatGPT for feedback, and it said "A couple small tweaks to make it even smoother:" and went ahead in rewriting it (highlighting significant changes in bold)

First off—sorry! I should have [probably] let you know on Saturday itself that I wasn’t planning to write, not on Monday after the fact.
[So] Last week, I was traveling for work, deep in Q2 planning. I had a blast, but as with all my past work trips and vacations, I didn’t get around to writing.

Now, I think ChatGPT's writing is indeed smoother. But it's also less .. me. Gone are my "So" and other bad but unique word habits, for example.

Also, I wasn't "deep" in Q2 planning – I was just traveling for planning. I didn't "not get around to writing," – I just planned not to write, like on every work trip – I didn't even take my personal computer with me.

I eventually ran my post through Grammarly, which suggested only a couple grammar corrections and kept my voice intact.

Where we write (the medium), be it text messaging, social media, zoom, or in person, changes what we communicate to our audience. But the tools we use directly change what we choose to communicate.

A message on Slack comes across differently on iMessage. A LinkedIn post is different from Instagram. Even Claude and ChatGPT can shape responses in different ways.

While we thought the medium was the message, the real force shaping it is the tool itself. The tool is the substrate where our actions take place.

Let's explore how tools change what we do and think by going on a small digression and talking about a core tool that influences and changes what we do ...

The todo list.

Getting things full.. err ... done

David Allen is a notorious productivity guru who created the method and book Getting Things Done. The book's subtitle is "The art of stress-free productivity."

The first edition of GTD came out in 2001. Back then:

• There were no smartphones
• Emails were mostly from people, not machines
• There was no Slack
• He spends time comparing paper planners to Palm Pilots

It's funny to think about how influential the GTD process was to how most professional work gets done today, though. Many of them follow this formula:

1. Storage: Add all the work to a central storage
2. Triage: Sort through it (somehow)
3. Prioritization: Choose what matters most (somehow)
4. Action: Work on the next thing under the top project

Fast forward to a few decades later, and the unconstrained use of digital information raises big challenges to that approach:

1. Storage: The central storage can have hundreds, even thousands of items. And there's an endless stream of new tasks.
2. Triage: Determining whether a task is actionable ranges from trivial to impossible, given its innumerable sources.
3. Priority: With hundreds of tasks, it's almost impossible to be certain of prioritization – how do you even compare them?
4. Action: A tendency to have several items in progress at once, driven by the need to balance numerous competing demands.

Systems like GTD, tied to our digital modern reality, almost invariably lead us to an infinite backlog. What was once a method for managing a few pending tasks has transformed into an ever-expanding repository of unfinished work.

When creating and capturing tasks is effortless, tasks accumulate far faster than they are completed. Without natural constraints, like those found on the limited page of a notebook, the backlog grows endlessly.

Under such method, meta-work expands significantly: the machine that accumulates possible work becomes its own maintenance burden. Its care, or neglect, directly shapes what work gets done and how.

A core tenet of GTD is "store all the work that needs to be done in one place." But in an unconstrained world where the potential for work to be done is infinite, this becomes the opposite of a recipe for stress-free productivity.

Instead of relieving cognitive load, the backlog itself becomes a source of stress, as its sheer size makes prioritization harder and completion feel impossible.

A common result is that we work on the wrong things and allocate our time poorly.. Urgent and visible tasks take priority over important ones. Quick wins feel productive, while deeper work gets buried. Progress on an infinite list becomes an illusion, and we default to what's easiest to prioritize and complete.

What has changed from 2001 to now, and how can we get back what we lost?

Embracing constraints

A clear difference between our digital and physical reality is the prevalence of constraints in the physical world. We can only write so much on a page, store so many papers in a folder, and stack so many documents on a desk.

Under a more constrained system, the work that gets done – and how it gets done – is fundamentally different.

1. Storage: Limited space creates a natural competition for what gets kept.
2. Triage: Without expectations to store everything, only easy-to-triage items make the cut.
3. Priority: Fewer, clearer tasks make prioritization simpler and more meaningful.
4. Action: With fewer competing demands, it's easier to focus on work until completion.

The trade-off, of course, is that some work simply doesn't get done. Such a constrained system means that some tasks – possibly valuable ones – never make the cut. Some ideas don't get captured, tasks don't get tracked, work gets overlooked.

The tool, once again, defines the work that gets done and how it gets done.

We explored in more detail how constraints impact what work gets done, but many other factors in your tool also shape what gets prioritized and how you work on it:

• Visibility: What draws attention: due dates, starred items, urgency icons, recently added tasks or older tasks.
• Automation: Whether tasks enter the system: manually added, auto-generated, imported or recurring.
• Ordering: How tasks are arranged – do they appear on top by drag-and-drop, sorting rules, or random order.
• Task details: Level of granularity – simple sentences, structured user stories, highly detailed entries with several fields and tags.

All these variables fundamentally change what work gets done – and how it gets done.

The tool is the message. Or, in this case, the work.

Tools fundamentally shape how we act.

Reframing McLuhan: The Tool is the Message

McLuhan argued that the medium is the message – that the form of communication itself shapes what is communicated.

McLuhan was right, but his insight should be broadened: it's not just the medium that is the message, but our choice of tools that fundamentally shapes how we act.

In a world where tools are more powerful than ever, they don't just assist us in making our "original" choices – if such a thing even exists. Tools redefine how we behave, how we allocate effort and attention, and ultimately, the impact we have on the world.

By choosing your tools you are, in a very real way, choosing who you want to be.

If you don't choose your tools deliberately, you risk losing control over your own choices. They will shape your priorities, dictate demands on your attention, and decide what gets left behind.

There's no opt-out: Choose the right tools, or your tools will choose for you.