The Classic Hammer Problem

It suggests that you don’t actually have any other tools; just a hammer. Maybe even only one kind of hammer.

That’s always been an oversimplification—a useful one, to be sure—but we’re way past that now. We’ve got every kind of hammer and screwdriver and saw and pliers you can imagine; both metaphorical and literal.

I think the more difficult and realistic scenario is that we find ourselves faced with a problem and the hammer is already in our hand, tempting us with an immediate, if inappropriate, solution.

P.S. This is the blessing and the curse of having a multi-tool in your pocket at all times: it’s extremely convenient and it’s good enough at solving most common problems that it discourages going to the effort of fetching the right tool when the occasion demands it.