Do you know how to tie your shoes? Are you sure?

This is a great little TED talk by Terry Moore a few years ago that offers a bit of insight that might be able to help a lot of us... especially those that have children suffering from CUS (Chronic Untied Shoelaces).

It turns out it is not their fault that their laces are coming untied, it is the fault of the system that has been teaching them to tie their shoelaces incorrectly!

In this talk Mr. Moore describes how a shoe store owner turned the lace typing paradigm that had been a part of his life for so many years, was flawed and causing his new shoes to constantly come untied. The store owner taught him about the weak and strong from of the classic shoe knot, and how most of us use the weaker form which is far more likely to come undone. By merely reversing the direction you wrap your lace around the loop (or send the rabbit around the tree) you can make a stronger knot.

Mr. Moore's goal for his short talk was not just to give us this bit of information can help all of us avoid those Gordian monstrosities that seem to end up on kids' laces when they start stacking double knots on top of each other, but to point out that there are always little things out there that we can still learn to improve our lives.