When You Focus on the Work, The Simplest Tools and Tactics Serve Best

Robert Hughes

“A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.” – Robert Hughes, Born Jul. 28, 1938.

Ah, the monkey wrench. A large, solidly made tool – that can repair big machines… Or if deliberately tossed into a running machine, wreck it up completely.

Hence the slang usage of “monkey wrench” to mean an outside element that totally screws up a situation that was otherwise going smoothly.

You have a figurative monkey wrench. Or rather, you can get one pretty easily. I am referring to a smart phone or tablet or notebook computer.

Portable. Versatile. With Internet access and a built-in camera and a few social media accounts, you have a monkey wrench that you can use to reach out to people who need things fixed, and you can help them. Whatever you do or sell, you can find people with problems to solve and start a conversation.

Or, play the saboteur and start agitating the members of the population who are gathered around your desired topic. Disrupt the status quo by aggressively attacking it and carve out a name for yourself in a saturated field. Capture attention of bored diehards and grow that way.

If you're determined, you can find and cultivate and grow and make a nice living off an audience that likes you for who you are. Plus that actual valuable thing you can offer to them – your product or service, whatever that may be.

You have access to the tools that can help you make a dent in the world and get your own piece of the good life.

You can do what a slack ass excuse-making person can't do with the best podcast mic, and the dual 4K gigantic monitors, and the full green screen studio, cannot do. They are weighed down by tools and decisions and overhead.

Like any teenager can, you can just push record, or write your ass off and hit publish. Rip it. One take. One draft. If you can't yet, practice. Get better at being awesome off the cuff and at speed.

Tell me what you're going to do MORE of, starting now. Tell me how you're going to swing your own monkey wrench, to fix or fracture your world for your own benefit.

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