Thanks to a friend I got an upgrade to our still-being-setup kitchen. I now have a non-stick pan along with a few more new additions. I would previously use a bowl that people usually use to boil milk etc. for making whatever I did. The non-stick pan feels so great! It has made it a lot simpler to make some of the things I used to, because its non-stick. And it has vastly expanded the possibilities of things I can make, by virtue of being flat and wide based. The pan is such a great addition to my kitchen paraphernalia, and it adds a new dimension to the kind of things I can make. I’m not here to write a user review for it, though.

What are such tools in other things that you do, that drastically changed the way you did something, or added a new dimension to the kinds of things you could do, tools that make you feel like you have a new super-power? Learning to write Python (after starting off with C) seemed to give me so much power allowing me to focus on the problem, rather than fussing over the low level details. Sasha mentions in this post how using a Spaced Repetition System like Anki drastically improved her efficiency because she could focus on thinking about higher level things rather than trying to recall or search for what method or function to use to do something.

What are some such level-up tools for you? Is there a systematic approach to discovering tools?