I avoid easy things I haven't tried

When I haven't done a thing, I avoid doing it because it might be hard. There's a hidden barrier in my head that makes me take a long time to adopt new tools. And sometimes those new tools are super simple to use!

This is embarrassing, but it took me about five years to try recording my screen using QuickTime Player on Mac and it's so easy. You just need to right click on the player and select "New Screen Recording" and then you'll be able to select which parts of your screen you want to record.

• Spotlight search (⌘space) is the easiest way to open QuickTime player
• There will be an icon in your menubar to stop recording. (My first video included some confused googling while I figured that out)
• By default, it will save recording to your ~/Documents folder, but that's configurable in its options.

If you want to use Mac's screenshot/screen-recording tool, it's even easier:

• ⌘-shift-5 opens up the screenshot menu where you can select "record selected portion" or "record fullscreen."
• ⌘-shift-4 is a hotkey for quick screenshots. Just drag your mouse to select the area. (If you hold ctrl, it will stick the image into your copy-paste buffer)

After having tried it once, it feels like it's fully part of my toolbox. I know it's easy, and it's a tool I'll happily reach for when I run into a problem where a quick recording might help. Next time, I might even try adding some audio. Who knows?

It's a good reminder for me that when I'm problem-solving, I tend to limit myself to the tools that I already know, and that it's worth putting a teeny bit of effort into expanding that set of tools.

And I was in a role where I created a ton of documentation and training materials for my company! It's not like there weren't times when a screen-recording or short-video wouldn't have been valuable to add, but because it was a tool I wasn't comfortable with, I'd instead limit myself to taking screenshots rather than being able to include screenshots and a video.

If you haven't tried recording your screen before, I'd recommend taking 2 minutes to do a mini-recording of your screen. It might feel a little silly, but actually clicking the buttons makes a huge difference towards going from intellectually understanding that you can do something, to knowing that you can do something and having it be part of your toolkit. Two minutes is a pretty low investment towards being able to officially put the tool into your toolbox.

And you might have a few other things that you intellectually know that you can do, but haven't ever actually done. Pick one and spend a few minutes to give it a quick try!