You spend at least two weeks of your life tying your shoe laces
Shoelace tying calculations
Let’s presume that you take around 20 seconds to tie your laces and you you take your shoes on and off twice a day, that you learnt to tie your shoelaces at the age of 5 and you live to age 85.
20×2 = 40 seconds per day
40*365 days of the year = 14,600 seconds (4.05 hours per year)
4.05 hours*85 years = 344.72 hours, 14.36 days, 2.05 weeks in your life!)
So we spend at least 2 weeks of our life tying shoe laces. That’s enough time to watch every episode of Game of Thrones five times. If you replaced your laced shoes with velcro or slip-on shoes you would save at least two weeks over your lifetime.
What could you do with the time saved from tying shoe laces over a lifetime?
Watch every episode of Game of Thrones (63.5 hours)
Go to the moon and back twice (3 days)
Boil 4,136 eggs consecutively (5 minutes per egg)
Watch every episode of The Simpsons twice (eight-and-a-half days)
Learn to juggle four balls (2 to 3 weeks)
Have an epic Eurotrip (2 weeks)
Learn to knit (20 hours)
Volunteer to teach English to impoverished children in Cambodia (2 weeks)
Why’s it called the Granny Knot?
When most people tie their shoe laces they start by making the first half of a granny knot. The granny knot one of the most common knots that everyone knows. The disadvantage is that it is hard to untie. Most people think that the granny knot gets its name from grandmother, as it’s a basic knot that your grandma could do even with arthritis or uncoordinated hands. However in fact the word ‘granny’ is more likely to come from ‘granary‘ because it was the knot used for tying grain sacks.
The Grisly Gurkhas shoelaces myth
Many have claimed that during World War 2 the Gurkhas (soldiers recruited from Nepal to fight for the British Army) could sneak up on a soldier and identify a soldier by feeling his shoelaces. British soldiers laced their shoes straight-bar lacing while Japanese laced criss-cross. Some say that the Gurkhas, reknowned for their fighting skills, would grab the soldier by the crotch and when the soldier bent down their head would be within easy striking distance.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoelaces
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