> If you approach the question of how these people achieve the things they do with a bias towards tooling then you'll come to the conclusion that it plays a big role in their success.
I think the point of the author in your quoted text is that you want to avoid the tools getting in your way. If you're a writer, you become successful by writing good stuff. That's harder to do if your OS crashes and you have to click through a bunch of menus while you're writing. That's the reason so many bloggers adopted markdown 10-15 years ago - writing in plain text meant the tools got out of their way. It's not about the tools making you more productive, it's about using tools that don't make you less productive.
I think the point of the author in your quoted text is that you want to avoid the tools getting in your way. If you're a writer, you become successful by writing good stuff. That's harder to do if your OS crashes and you have to click through a bunch of menus while you're writing. That's the reason so many bloggers adopted markdown 10-15 years ago - writing in plain text meant the tools got out of their way. It's not about the tools making you more productive, it's about using tools that don't make you less productive.