There’s a point at which “more tools” stop solving problems and start creating them.
You don’t notice it at first. A chat platform that makes cross-team communication easier. A project tracker that brings visibility. A shared document that keeps everyone on the same page.
Then you realize your day is now a scavenger hunt across six apps just to answer one question.
The irony is that each new tool arrives with the same promise: simplicity, transparency, efficiency. You can almost hear the sales deck in the background: “One place for all your work.”
Except it’s never one place. It’s one more place. And every place has its own notifications, conventions, and unspoken rules about how “responsive” you’re expected to be.
This isn’t nostalgia for some mythical past where we just “talked to each other” and things got done. That past also involved endless status meetings and misplaced spreadsheets. But at least the friction was visible.
Now, the friction is hidden behind tabs and integrations. Work feels smoother right up until you notice your team spending half their energy remembering where the work lives.
Tools are sold as neutral infrastructure, but they’re not. They change how people behave.
A constant stream of pings says “your focus isn’t yours.” A dashboard that’s always on says “someone is watching.” Even the best-intentioned rollouts come with a subtext: the old way wasn’t good enough. That can be motivating in small doses. In large doses, it’s exhausting.
The deeper issue is that tools often substitute for harder conversations. Instead of deciding what actually matters, we add another tracker to “help” us prioritize. Instead of agreeing on how to work, we add another platform to enforce the process. This works for a while, until people learn to game the system, ignore the system, or resent the system. And then we look for another tool.
None of this is an argument for going tool-free. The right ones are essential. But they don’t remove the burden of management. They can even make it heavier. Because when a tool fails to deliver the clarity it promised, the frustration doesn’t go to the vendor. It goes to the person who decided to use it.
You can only change platforms so many times before the eye-rolling starts. And when the eye-rolling starts, focus follows it out the door.