I remember buying a MacBook Pro once, which I couldn't have had for that long. I must have sold it. Why did I buy it? I had a main computer, which I'd generally be using in the same room as I intended to use the notebook.

That was just a set-up paragraph. I know the answer. I bought it thinking that finally, a MacBook Pro would provide conditions conducive to writing more, which I'd had my mind on. Lars had once told me he enjoyed writing while reclined, knees bent, notebook against his raised legs, typing away. Plus, the keyboard was clean, inviting, and illuminated – relative rarities at that time. But some measurable increase in writing was not the result.

I've always been interested in nice-looking keyboards for typing, so it seems written in stone that I'd eventually become at least a sidelines enthusiast of mechanical keyboards (the focus of a seeming renaissance in the mainly-smartphones,-tablets-and-notebooks era), and that I'm typing on one now. But neither that MacBook Pro, nor any subsequent keyboards I may have adopted, were anywhere near directly responsible for any changes in my productivity.

I've decided to allow the test of time to solve certain things for me, and this is one. If I'd been fortunate enough to have the time and money to discover that nicer keyboards do not a prolific typist make, then by deduction, the primary change I sought must necessarily come from within, to promote an apparently-deserving cliché.

I've seen similar advice-seekers online: "I have a thousand dollars to spend on a setup to get started with voiceover recording. What equipment should I get?" Presumably, the person already owns a computer. A careful shopper who already owns a computer can get started recording their voice, with decent production quality, for under fifty dollars with a well-reputed, entry-level USB microphone. (In this almost science-fiction-resemblant age in which we live, equipment is now affordable which exceeds the "professional" quality of past decades. Slightly better equipment costs much more.) The aspirer's focus can then be appropriately placed less on their equipment, and more on their physical arrangement, routine, workflow, mentality, and technique. Then, when their muscle memory has begun to run those into a rut, they'll know themselves and their needs well enough to spend more money on that incremental improvement in their supporting equipment, and they'll understand better how to treat it and use it. Or if they've decided it's not for them, they'll only be out fifty dollars, not a thousand.

I'd guess most people have a sense of this, so I share this reflection as affirmation. If you're just trying to create something digital, then minimal equipment is needed, but the idea that you require something enormous or luxurious even to be competent can be stifling when errantly believed. If you're going to adopt a belief around it, start with something truer: most of what you need is you.