Why do I mention when the tool I useis refurbished or a second hand one ?

I love behind the scenes

One thing I loved about DVDs back in the day was that they had behind the scenes. There they showed the tips and tricks they used to make the film happen, What tools they used and how many people worked on something. I found these just interesting. But I've also heard many stories of people who became video professionals who got so inspired by these behind the scenes that it pushed them to want to do jobs in that world.

In a lot of my work I try, at a very small scale, to do the same. I try to add tiny "behind the scenes moments" where people can discover how the sausage is made. I do that in the hope that some of the people I reach get inspired and then also want to do the same: share more of their thinking even if as me they feel they have an impostor syndrome of the size of the Mount Everest.

How do I share the behind the scenes?

I share the behind the scenes in two main ways online:

• Backstage blog: In this blog I share tiny articles, just love this one, where I share how I create my educational content and how I setup my life to be able to do so.

• End notes: At the end of articles I often have a short paragraph, like you find in this article, when I share how I wrote this piece.

So why mention the refurbished, second hand stuff?

First, it's part of a good behind the scenes to share what toods you are using. So it also makes sense to reveal that the tools are second hand tools as it moves the behind the scene more precise and therefore more interesting for the curious mind.

Second, that's how I got challenged to try second hand and refurbished tech tools. For years I only bought tech tools new. I wanted to have the full warranty and just the best tool. One day I was looking at a digital service and the guy who made it had on the footer of his website a mention like : "Made in France on a refurbished Macbook pro". Honestly I don't remember who is that guy or his service. But I remember that footer.

And it got me thinking: he made a great service with a refurbished mac. I knew refurbished mac existed but never considered them for myself. But I feel this tiny information in that tooter planted the seed that years later made me decide to buy my new laptop from the refurbished Apple Store. And that mac was exactly like a new Mac. This then created a domino effect. Now I'm mostly looking at second hand devices when I need to buy a tool. The tiny behind the scene in the footer inspired me to try. The trial showed me it makes no difference. It now has changed my buying habit. I'm now slowly learning to do the same for clothes even if I hate browsing in second hand stores. But I found Marko in Switzerland who helps me with that.

Becca Farsace a camera reviewer does something similar. At the end of reviews she often gives the price of the device new and shows then where to get the device in second hand and how much you save, often adding that her own devices are most of them second hand.

So if a footer note that I looked years ago helped me change my buying habit, I m trying to do the same thing with my own work.

A note about ego

Let's be honest. This can all be seen as me showing others how much of a good guy I am. It can be just an ego boost for me. I hope that I 'm clear that I 'm no perfect guy. I struggle still with my ambivalence with AI, we clearly are not a zero waste family, there is still a shit load I can do better when it comes to sustainability. I feel that writing about these small wins you do about sustainability slowly creates a domino effect where you tell yourself: okay now this is good, what's the next thing to fix?

Backstage of this article

This article was illustrated and written by hand on a refurbished Remarkable II tablet. I then used the Connect Service of Remarkable to turn the hand written text into a typed text.