Sunday Post | A New Way to Tie Your Shoes

Monday to Saturday, this is a VERY popular blog on B2B Marketing and Lead Generation. But on Sundays, we tackle other topics. Like how to tie your shoes.

Undoubtedly tips on tying shoes is a strange topic for a Sunday post. After all, we’ve all been tying our shoes since we were very small children. But as I learned in a TED talk, there really is a better way.

Turns out there is a strong form and a weak form of the bow-tie knot. We’ve been trained from childhood to tie the weak form of the shoe knot.

Most people think the only way to keep shoes from coming untied is to use a double knot. But no. There is another way – and it is so simple. I’ll tell you how.

The way you were taught is this: Create a loop and wind the shoelace around the loop counter-clockwise, then pull it through to create a new loop. That’s how we all learned.

Try this instead. Create a loop as before, but wind the shoelace around the loop clockwise and pull it through to create the new loop. Pull it tight. You just tied a strong knot.

Sounds fishy. Does it really work?

A good way to test is to play sports.

Last Saturday, I played 2 full hours of full court basketball. (I do this every Saturday morning.) As an experiment, I used this new approach – no double knot – and just the strong form of the bow knot.

My shoes never came untied. I know full well a regular knot would have come untied several times during athletic play – as play stopped several times to let someone retie his shoes. Try tying the strong knot now.

Here’s the TED video where I learned it.

Try this new knot. And please let me know how it works for you.

Monday through Friday, Jeff is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New Customers. On Saturday, he’s a weekend jock. And on Sundays, he relaxes with his wife and three boys and pines about struggling salespeople.