A few weeks ago I came across a blog post that had been cross-posted on Hacker News titled “Everything Must Be Paid For Twice“. When I visited the blog, my assumptions for the article based on the title was extremely literal – you always have to re-buy a product (presumably due to product failure, or more likely, buying the wrong thing and then buying the right thing in its place). In my post Analysis Paralysis, I talk about how sometimes making a decision is such a difficult task that I may just not make a decision at all. One of those decision trees I always have problems with is if I buy this product now, will I need to replace it with a better (albeit slightly more expensive) product down the road? Maybe I just won’t buy it at all.
So needless to say, I figured the post was going to be about spend more money on the better product in the first place, and you’ve bought it for life. That’s actually sound advice to be honest, but that’s not what this blog post was about. This post was so much more – and quite honestly, never before has a blog post resonated so much with me. Suddenly, everything clicked.
The concept of “Everything Must Be Paid For Twice” is brilliant in its simplicity. If you buy something that you intend to use, you have to actually use it to get the value out of it. For example, if you buy a book on how to take great photos, the second payment for the product is the time spent learning the book and the concepts it teaches. The blog post does a great example of articulating the ‘second payment’ for products so I won’t go too deep into it here. The reason I wanted to talk about this blog post is I’m guilty a sin of doing exactly this. Buying something, with intentions to use the thing – and then letting it collect dust.
In my original outline notes for this post I was going to detail all of the things I’ve purchased once but never paid for a second time, but I decided I’m not ready to air that dirty laundry yet. The one that I’ll actively touch on for the purposes of this discussion are computer and programming manuals, because they’re relevant to my current life journey. Over the years I have purchased countless programming and system administration books and I have read precisely none of them cover-to-cover. By the time I decide it’s just about time to crack open the book and take a peek – I realize the contents have become deprecated. I then start looking for a replacement for that book because, in my head, I recognized the value of the book when I bought it, and need to replace it with a current version so I don’t lose the original value. In a way, I have paid for the product twice – but in my case it’s literal and not figurative!
In my Analysis Paralysis post, I talk about the most important thing (and really the only thing) that you need to get started is a good support system for the language you’re learning. Books are fine – but don’t let them collect dust. Buy a current edition and use it – open the book, dogear pages, highlight lines, add post-it notes – whatever works for you! A pristine untouched programming book has exactly zero resale value (trust me I know – in some places I can’t even donate them, as there are policies against accepting computer books because they age so quickly). Instead, why not crack the book open and actually use it. Which is exactly what I plan on doing – I bought 3 books as part of my current programming journey (I won’t link them here, I’m not trying to sell a product, just a concept), and my intention is to absorb as much information out of them as I possibly can.
