Walking into a library doesn’t make you literate. Owning a speedo doesn’t make you a swimming superstar. Nor does having a chemistry set make you a chemist. Sure, all of these statements make sense. It’s hard to argue otherwise. So why was I so shocked this morning when I realized that scribbling my appointments into a calendar doesn’t make me organized? That’s right, I woke up bright and early to play squash with a friend from college—I even had the decency to send a polite text message to her while heading over to the courts.

“Hemenway, I’m on my way.”

She responded with a real, voice-to-voice telephone call. Her voice was laughing, though. It looks like I’ll need to wake up, bright and early, again, tomorrow morning How can this be? My Google calendar was wrong. I was wrong.

Moral 1: Having a resource is only half the story. You need to know how to use it well, too. (The computer scientists have a phrase for this sort of situation, “Garbage in, garbage out.”)
Moral 2: I should get an assistant.

At least I got some quality practice in.