It’s a right-handed world, and some days I just muddle through it.

While lots of tools are “ambi-neutral,” many others are not. Scissors are definitively in the not column. But so too are many can openers, ice cream scoops, and other everyday household items. Even my simple combination lock is right-leaning. If I used my natural motion to stick it on the locker, it would be locked in backwards—and require bolt cutters to remove.

There’s a point here.

The popular solution may not be your right choice.

I led a lunch discussion the other day on social media tools. One of the tools I mentioned was Nimble, which is a social CRM platform. I like several features, but the big seller for me was the way that it consolidated people’s social activity into a dashboard. I subscribed for several months until LinkedIn shut off its API (meaning that activity on LinkedIn was no longer visible in Nimble).

There was one person at the meeting, Claire Liston, who had heard me recommend Nimble in the past and had started using it. Liston likes that the social activity dashboard lets her keep track of what her contacts are saying online. But she loves that Nimble’s sales-based structure makes it easy to move prospects along the path.

Where I saw irritating little boxes, Liston sees a process that’s intuitive to her.

It’s a good reminder.

Use the tools that work for you.

I recommend platforms and business and social media tools from time to time. They are always items I’m currently using or have tried and found useful. But if there were only one “right way,” we wouldn’t have so many plug-ins, extensions, software, channels, and platforms that are all similar but not quite the same.

Just because I think something is awesome doesn’t mean it will be right for you. And that’s okay.

Feature photo by rumbleteaser (Flickr).