I love gear as much as the next musician. What could be cooler than getting a shiny new toy for your next gig?

While it's important to have quality equipment, there's a serious problem with gear lust:

1. It insatiable- you're never going to be able to satisfy it, no matter how many times you buy. What's worse is, you can tie up the money that you'd need for more important things like marketing, or career coaching.

2. It's unproductive- imagine what you could do with that 30 minutes you spend online every day reading about gear. That's 30 minutes you're not marketing, working on your chops, etc.

3. It gives the illusion that you're successful. Buying a nice piece of gear will temporarily make you feel like you're accomplishing something important, regardless of whether or not that's true.

I had a chance to hang out with a really talented musician at a show a couple of weekends ago- he was smart, funny, and had some massively good chops, but the only thing he was really interested in was gear. He talked incessantly about what gear he had, new gear that came on the market this month, and what he was planning on buying next.

Imagine your a ditch digger. People would think you're crazy if you spent 30 minutes every day reading through shovel magazines, agonizing over the right shovel to fit your particular style of digging.

The tool should be invisible. The musician shouldn't.