“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” – Robin Williams
As children, almost everyone learns how to tie their shoes using the “Standard Knot,” which is pictured above on the left.
If you want to keep your shoes tied, the Standard Knot is absolutely horrible. Growing up, I remember re-tying my shoes at least every 10 minutes. Playground minutes were precious, and this knot squandered them mercilessly. Even double-knotting didn’t help.
Believe it or not, there’s a better way to tie your shoes. After years of study and experimentation, Ian Fieggen created “Ian’s Secure Shoelace Knot,” (pictured above right) a new-to-the-world knot that is designed to be both secure and easy to tie. In the five years I’ve been tying my shoes with Ian’s Secure Knot, my shoes have never come untied. Not once.
I don’t know of anyone who likes the Standard Knot – the problems are well known. If that’s the case, why do so many people still tie their shoes this way if there’s a better alternative, and why is it the standard knot being taught to the next generation of young shoe-tying children?
There are two reasons: social proof and inertia.
Being a Non-Conformist is Hard
Social proof is a powerful force – it’s easiest to do what everyone else is doing. Think of how uncomfortable it is to go to a business or social event and realize that you’re underdressed for the occasion, or how hard it is to remain waiting on the sidewalk at a crosswalk when everyone else starts walking, even if the light hasn’t changed. No one wants to be the weird one, even if doing things differently is demonstrably better.
Inertia is the effort it takes to learn something new and stop doing things the old way. Typing using a Dvorak keyboard layout may be more efficient than the standard QWERTY layout (which was created with the specific intent of slowing typists down so the typewriter keys wouldn’t jam), but how many of us have taken the time to remap our keyboard keys and suffer through a few weeks of re-mapping our brain? Not many, including me.
Social proof and inertia are powerful forces that prevent us from changing things, even if the new way is better. The reason more people haven’t adopted Ian’s Secure Knot is that it’s easier to complain about the old way than to learn how to do it differently.
How to Buck the System
Here’s a summary of a few common societal expectations:
- Graduate from high school.
- Go to college.
- Get a job working for someone else.
- Get married / buy a house / have kids.
- Work 40+ hours a week, 50-weeks a year.
- Climb the corporate ladder as high as you can.
- Retire when you’re 60-ish and don’t work at all.
Each of these items carries the weight of decades of social proof and inertia. Even if you don’t want to do them or know a better way, you’ll feel implicit and explicit pressure from other people to conform to the standard. How, then, do you muster the strength to “take the road less travelled?”
Simple: you practice. Think of it like non-conformist strength training. The purpose is to build up your non-conforming “escape velocity” to the point that you’re capable of breaking free of social gravity.
Start with the small things, like tying your shoelaces. Move up to something bigger, like learning Dvorak or working at a standing desk instead of sitting down. By the time you’re ready to quit your job and backpack around Asia for a year, it’ll be easier to resist the social proof and inertia you’ll inevitably experience.
Walking With Frog Feet
In a previous post, I mentioned running around New York City in barefoot shoes. They look funny, and people notice and talk.
Some people think the shoes are weird, and they tell me so. Others think they’re cool, and they tell me so. What others think about them doesn’t really concern me – all I know is that wearing them has helped me learn that doing things differently is not only possible… it’s downright fun.
What do you want to do differently? What’s holding you back?
(Photo credit: Ian Fieggen)
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Nothing’s holding me back. Just need a lil’ more determination and mow through negativity that’s coming from all corners.
Reversing the social inertia requires being intellectually curious. That is what the Non-Conformist does — question the status quo by figuring out why.
I find that the things that hold me back are the negative people (like in Daniel’s comment above). It can sometimes be daunting to hack your way through the negative to achieve your goals.
Surrounding yourself with like minded folks does help reduce the negativity.
I believe reversing the social inertia requires confidence. If you are confident in yourself you won’t care what other people think.
Hi Josh,
I was taught the Ian’s Secure Shoelace Knot as a kid in India, (never knew what it was called until today). When my family moved to South Africa all my caucasian friends tied it the standard way. Just a note that learnings passon in each culture is different. BUT all your points about over coming the conformist standards, holds true every where.
Regards,
- Jasmine
I live in Malaysia and I’ve been using Ian’s knot since I was 7 – and that was around 25 years ago. I believe my parents and grandparents are taught the same way.
I am 27, went to college, graduated, work in corporate America and just bought my first house.
I would love to do any/all of the following:
a) travel to Australia for a month,
b) quit my job,
c) go back to school (ranging from interior decorating to pediatrics)
What’s holding me back? Fear of the unknown and being accustomed to the financial lifestyle I live now
Being non-conformist like that is hard. It’s stupid to be nonconformist for the sake of it, but makes a lot of sense if there is a point.
I wear vibram fivefingers and love them (have for about a year), and also try to be a non-workaholic in a workaholic industry. It can be challenging at times.
I have a cultural barrier of talking software as a gesture or being polite. It has been working against me for years. I tried to change it several times but unconsciously returned to my old habit. Still trying though. I hope I will break that barrier sometime….
I have a cultural barrier of talking softer as a gesture or being polite. It has been working against me for years. I tried to change it several times but unconsciously returned to my old habit. Still trying though. I hope I will break that barrier sometime….
Great post. I embrace the “buck the system” thought, not just for the heck of it, but if it makes sense. Thinking outside of conventional thought, drawing outside of conventional boundaries, believing that which is outside our realm of touch and experience is SO hard for SO many of us.
I agree with the posters who temper the “buck the system” method with ensuring there’s substantive thought behind it. I grew up in the ’70s, which was “buck everything” regardless of whether there were thousands of years of history for why certain fundamental things work and are still good practice. Everything we do should be based on basic values. As long as those values are maintained, buck away
Sandra, the basic values and knowledge cannot be easily bucked because they are our foundation. Interestingly, they have endured since the days of Aristotle and Sun Tzu. Everything else are interpretations (wrong or correct) of the same truths.
Anyway, let me comment on what Mike said about confidence, which is in turn tied to Jarie Bolander’s post. Mike, you mention confidence is all and I agree, where there is will there’s a way. But Jarie makes a strong point: being alone in your initiative is perhaps the most daunting part of it all, because it is in solitude where we face our greatest fears. However, in company, we can back each other and together stand strong and resolute. So yes, be confident but also look for others who can help you through those moments of weakness.
About the rest, I wholeheartedly agree with all said, and I’ll just add that everyone should seek to change the world (and let them have their own definition of what that means).
And I don’t feel myself be able to change my life entirely and face all consequences it brings. But I really appreciate people who can manage doing so, no matter what happens just follow inner calling and start being different, even maybe unnormal in someway. And I noticed that as we are getting older it’s becoming more complicated and seems impossible to do.
But… even impossible says: I’m Possible!!!
Great post Josh!
I have learned a new way to tie shoes, just wait to see what is next!
I definitely agree that so much of what we do is just following others. Even non-conformity has become conformist. People get Japanese character tatoos because all of their peers have similar tatoos. People buy Moleskin notebooks because that is what all the creative people are doing.
There is merit in being different just for the sake of being different, but I would rather focus on authenticity. We should do the things that we really want to do, regardless of the perception of others. That is hard. Real authenticity is scarce in the world.
I learned to tie the ‘better bow’ in “The Klutz Book of Knots” (http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Hale-Co-Klutz-Knots/dp/B0000AXTSF) – it’s just the standard bow, but with two loops that the final bow gets pulled through. It NEVER comes undone, but still unties with a single tug.
I taught myself dvorak typing several years ago. I don’t necessarily type faster, but I type much more comfortably. Unfortunately I can no longer type normal qwerty, so I look like a bumbling idiot on other peoples computers.
I never actually finished high school, due to a snafu in a foreign exchange program and an incomplete in English Comp 102, but still do well as an independent tech consultant, and consider life-long learning essential. Lack of a diploma isn’t the end of the world, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a path to success.
The first two are creative alternatives to the ’standard’ that took extra effort; the last one is mostly due to a personal demon of procrastination and difficulty following things to completion. I think there is a fine line between ‘doing things different because you’ve got that something extra’ and ‘doing things different because you can’t keep up with the norm’, and it leads to much of the stigma of following your own path.
I’ve been tying my shoes like that ‘invented’ method all my life. Cause I figured out it was easier and better. Didn’t realise someone thought they needed to get credit for that idea. Clearly I am a visionary
Very cool post. Thanks.
Always rebelling.
My learning for the day is a new way to tie shoes, that’s awesome.
As for the non-conformity, most often it’s not the act itself that is hard, but the consequences. I would learn to type on Dvorak, but as @Chris Happel mentioned, the consequence is what happens when you’re on someone else’s computer.
I’m currently fighting a few language things–soccer doesn’t exist, it’s futbol (even though I grew up in Ohio), and you don’t stand “on line,” you stand “in line” (weird New Yorkers).
I remember being taught “Ian’s” knot in kindergarten (in America) when I learned to tie my shoes (that was like 30 years ago now). We called it “bunny ears” and it was actually taught as the precursor to learning the Standard Knot, which was considered the “grownup” way to tie shoes. Bunny ears were easier for little kids’ fingers and less confusing than the standard knot.
Kind of ironic that the better knot was taught as the “baby” way to do it and seen as something to be outgrown!
Imagine learning to tie your shoes when you were 5 and your mum teaches you the standard knot and then the next day your dad teaches you how to do Ian’s knot…. Then your dad tells you your tieing them wrong so you conform to his way of doing it and then your mum tells you your doing it wrong. Poor little 5 year old me thought I was going crazy!! I can remember bursting into tears and showing them both ways and being like ‘do I do it like this or this?” LOL they then realised they had both been teaching me a different way… and they told me “tie them how you want dear” haha.
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