*This is not a sympathy post!*
Three weeks ago, right at the end of a basketball game, I broke my right index finger. You know, the one you use for everything: typing, driving, playing piano and guitar, pointing at spreadsheets like I know what I'm talking about. I'm getting a bit better using my left hand... slowly.
I'm still only halfway to getting the splint off, so a few more one handed weeks ahead.
Turns out losing one finger is far more disruptive than you'd expect. No driving. No sport. No music. Typing with one hand is painfully slow. Pretty frustrating honestly.
How ironic! The digital coach is forced to adopt more accessible tech, and not just recommend it to everyone else.
But it's forced a genuinely useful lesson in working smarter, not harder. A few things I've picked up along the way:
Voice typing is underrated. Dictating drafts and then running them through AI editing has been a surprisingly good combo, faster than I expected and the quality holds up.
My Wacom tablet, normally for planning, sketching and concept mapping, became a giant touchpad. A bigger surface makes one handed navigation much easier. I also leaned hard on my StreamDeck, mapping out common phrases, sign offs and templates to single button presses, which saved a huge amount of one handed typing.
Everything takes longer! I've had to get comfortable with less: less output, less polish, fewer things ticked off each day. Prioritising hard, delegating what I can and accepting that a slower week isn't a failed week.
Staying connected with people has mattered more than ever, even when it means typing up notes twice as slowly afterward.
Mostly though, it's made me notice how much accessibility matters, and how the right tools quietly remove friction most of us never think about until we actually need them.
A broken finger is a small thing in the scheme of life. But it's a good reminder that constraints often teach us more than smooth sailing ever does.