Leverage is when the tools bend to the work
The real payoff shows up when tools are built around how you actually work — not when you bend around the tools.
Most software asks you to adapt to it. You learn its menus, its idea of a project, its workflow, and you mold your actual work to fit the shape it expects. It’s fine. It’s also where most of the friction in a day quietly hides.
The thing that surprised me, once I could build my own tools, is how much changes when you flip that. I run my work on a personal setup wired around how I actually operate — my own agents, voice, memory, the steps I personally repeat. Nothing generic. It’s not more powerful than off-the-shelf software in any benchmark sense. It just doesn’t make me translate.
That removed-translation is the whole win. The leverage isn’t a better tool — it’s a tool that fits, so the friction between intent and action drops close to zero.
Which makes me wonder how much of “being organized” or “being productive” is really just bending around tools that were never shaped for you. More on the building side of this in The hard part isn’t the model — it’s the rules it can’t get wrong.