There’s a moment most of us creative people get. You’re stuck on something. The project isn’t coming together the way you imagined. And then it occurs to you: maybe the problem is the tool I am using. That new shiny thing they are raving about on the socials could be the solution.
Maybe the DAW is limiting you. Maybe the right plugin would unlock something. Maybe if you had better brushes, a different camera, that specific notebook everyone keeps recommending…
I’ve been here more times than I’d like to admit and my credit card company is happy to support me in my endeavours. But I’ve learned that getting more stuff is almost always wrong.
The Acquisition Trap
There’s a term in music circles for this: Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or GAS. It’s been studied seriously enough to warrant an academic book on the subject, Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music by Jan-Peter Herbst and Jonas Menze. The research describes it as the “unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments and equipment as an anticipated catalyst of creative energy.”
The key word there is anticipated. The creative energy doesn’t arrive with the purchase. We anticipate that it will.
And it makes psychological sense. Buying new gear triggers a dopamine release. The anticipation of what you’ll make with it is genuinely exciting. But that feeling is about the acquisition, not the output. Once the novelty settles, the work is still the work. The blank page is still blank. The same creative friction you were feeling before is still there, waiting.
Musicians aren’t alone in this. Writers have the equivalent in the perfect notebook, the right pen, the new app that’s going to change their process. Photographers chase camera upgrades. Filmmakers justify new lenses. Artists accumulate materials they’ll get around to using – but how much of the stuff in that IKEA cart is being used! The specific tools differ. The pattern is the same.
Why More Choice Makes It Harder
Even when tool acquisition isn’t the problem, having too many options still is. Psychologist Barry Schwartz built an entire framework around this in The Paradox of Choice: the more options we have, the harder it becomes to make decisions, and the less satisfied we tend to be with the ones we do make.
In creative work, that friction is constant. Every session that begins with “which tool do I use for this?” is a session that’s already losing momentum before anything has been made. Every plugin folder with 200 options, every brush set with unlimited variations, every app with ten different ways to format the same thing… all of it adds decision overhead to a process that needs to flow.
The familiar tool removes that overhead entirely. You pick it up and you’re already in the work. That’s not a small thing.
Bonus tip: most apps have a favourites option, use it for the settings you always use
What the Tool Is Actually Promising
Here’s what I think is really going on with the acquisition impulse: tools promise to solve a creative problem, but the problem is almost never the tool.
The problem is usually the idea. Or the skill. Or the discipline to sit with something uncomfortable long enough for it to become something good.
A new plugin can’t fix a weak melody. A new camera can’t fix a weak composition. A new notebook can’t fix a writing block. The tool is neutral. It does what you tell it to do. And if you haven’t got something to tell it yet, more sophisticated tools just give you more sophisticated ways of avoiding the work, and at often considerable financial cost.
Some of the most distinctive creative voices in any discipline got there with very limited tools. Early hip-hop producers worked with one sampler and found ways to make that constraint into a sound. Jack White famously limited himself to recording on three tracks, not because he couldn’t afford more, but because the limitation forced decisions that shaped his music. Countless painters and writers and filmmakers have produced their most personal work with the simplest setups, because the simplicity kept the focus on what actually mattered.
The tool doesn’t make the work. The work makes the tool worthwhile.
What to Do Instead
None of this means never buy new tools, upgrade your setup, or explore new software. That can be genuinely useful. But there’s a difference between acquiring tools to solve a specific, identified creative need and acquiring tools because you’re stuck and hoping something external will unstick you.
The more useful question, when you feel the pull toward the next tool, is: what is this purchase actually solving? If you can name a specific, concrete limitation in your current work(flow) that this new thing will address, that’s a reasonable conversation to have with yourself. If the honest answer is closer to “I don’t know, I just feel like this would help”… well, perhaps the new shiny isn’t the solution for when you’re stuck.
The tools you already have are almost certainly enough. The question is whether you’re using them as well as you could.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
namaste
d
xox
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