You’re awesome, but.

You should re-learn how to tie your shoes. The hardcore way.

I’m sure you’re smart. I know you’re curious. I guess you have talents. You might even be beautiful. Nonetheless, you don’t know how to tie your shoes and that’s embarrassing. So, there’s a twist we all miss, and there’s a badass hardcore method for the toughest.

Where we all fail

Basically, that’s how you tie your shoes. If not, you can skip this part and run to the badass part. Be careful with the position of the strings, it matters. (Cheat code: when you’ll try in real life, first stay safe, but you’ll also have to mirror everything, ’cause the drawings are in front view)

The devil is in pat 2. That’s where we all screw up. It leads to the following situation — the weak node.

When you walk, the forces (in grey) lead the node to turn vertical. This position weakens it until it gets unravel. You don’t want a weak node, so here’s how to get a strong one.

Instead of passing above the loop, sneak underneath it. That’s all.

That way, the node stays horizontal and will tighten itself at each step. No need to remake it all the time anymore; you have a new freedom and a nice shoe. But that’s still not a badass one, you’re just ok.

Getting hardcore

This part shows how some great Parisian cordonneries do. Some talk about “the one and only way”. Basically, this node is to shoes what the Amsterdam flag is to flying fabrics.

NB : on step 2, we keep everything we learned on the previous part. It looks rough, but steps 1 and 2 are simply the same as we did previously plus one twist.

Now you can be proud of yourself, there’ll be none like you. What are you going to do with your new extra time ?

Conclusion: “we don’t know shit”

As Tim Urban well explained in his famous article The Cook and the Chief: Musk’s Secret Sauce and as the old classic The Emperor’s New Clothes told us, “we don’t know shit”. I think that’s what I got from my untied shoes. The great thing both stories teach us is that we’re all on the same boat, and “no one else knows shit either”. All we need to do, is make sure, we keep, doubting.

PS — That’s right, you also could have found a live performance of the first part in this TED talk. If you really struggle with the second part, there’s a half illustration here.