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Knots in general are a harmless and occasionally useful pasttime for many people. In fact I have a length of rope under my desk I will occasionally pick up and practice a few useful knots in just to keep them in my muscle memory. It's similar in many ways to people who solve rubix cubes or play with fidget spinners.
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And you never know when they'll come in handy! As a negative proof, I recently found myself trying desperately to remember how to tie a bowline hitch to stake down some garden stakes, and something in the "out of the hole, around the tree, back into the hole" was just not happening for me. Ended up just quadruple knotting and praying.
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The snap method of tying a bowline is my favourite. In nice rope it looks really fancy and can be done mostly from muscle memory (except remembering to pass the free end through from the backside to avoid a shameful cowboy bowline).

I found myself in a similar situation taking my kids crab fishing. We were quite high above the water so I was trying to tie the thin string on the net to the bucket so we could lower it into the water to fill it. After trying to think of the fancy way of doing it I just went with doubling up the string and tying a round turn and two half hitches, an embarrassingly simple knot which has most of the advantages of anything more complex.

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If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot
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It somehow reminded me of this: (How to open a door - Finnish instructional video from 1979) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wof0xPUmW38
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I’ve spent decades learning to enter and exit doors more efficiently for motivated to apply the principle of martial arts ‘flowing movements’ to everything and found this video charming and accurate. In a climate with -20C temps outdoors every wall second you have a door open translates to fractions of a firewood heating log, so teaching good door etiquette conserves energy waste. But even where it’s not an environmental extreme, getting better at your daily movements is a worthwhile investment. At one point I had it down to 29 ‘moves’ to go from my front door to in car, belted and started, in one continuous series of movements. Growing old gracefully doesn’t just mean being nice to people, after all :)

I took the time one year to learn a bunch of knot work and my ability to tie my shoes so they lay nicely has improved, even if I’m just using the same knot. But I also only tie my shoes once and never again, courtesy of elastic laces, so perhaps this specific tutorial isn’t as helpful for me as others. Still worth learning a knot once, tho though!

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Also think this is an underrated way to live. And it doesnt just have to be for efficiency sake. Taking even some beginner dance classes is helpful.

I like to call it "moving with intention" in my head. Proactive movement rather than Reactive.

Smooth is fast and fast is good - but there's nothing wrong with smooth and slow as well!

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altairprime says ". But I also only tie my shoes once and never again, courtesy of elastic laces,..."

Hell, I only tie my shoes once a week if that! I must be a effing kung fu fool! Still, watching the video and especially reading the comments really made me laugh!

Honestly, such endeavors are likely excessive. Time spent optimizing your body's movement is probably time better used elsewhere. Nonetheless it is your time! And there's always dance, mime, drama, yoga, etc. And there are exceptions, e.g., in the military there's often a need to do something like "move 20 fully-armed men inside a door in 10 seconds" or "get 15 men to awaken, take their morning constitution and dress in 16 minutes."

My father told me the Marines taught them how to do everything, even wipe their ass. I don't know if that was part of inspection.

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I have something even more useless! After fifteen years of trying to catch things when I drop them, I started catching things when I drop them. I’m not less clumsy now, but there’s no better feeling than dropping something, casually grabbing it out of midair with a conserved-motion movement, and then going back to whatever without an annoying interruption. I’m a bad fit for that particular military but, like, they do understand the effects of drilling in habits until they’re reflexive.

Some hobbies are really excellent for generalists, because you can apply the one learning-training method to any number of bizarre or intentional circumstances that life hands you. I’m currently working on ‘select heavier than average apples with a single toss and catch each at the grocery store’ and, no joke, some guy at the store complimented this. I’m sure they were hitting on me but they noticed. Made my day. It’s the hobby that keeps on giving. (I have so far only dropped one apple and, yes, I bought the poor bruised thing.)

Other fun hobbies in the category: Diagnostic guessing, Balancing stuff, Vehicle operation, Packing efficiently (rather than most compactly), Knots (which are critical to textile and bodily repair both), Folding (or as Calvin might call it, dimensional transmogrification), Echolocation mapping (you can practice while sitting in a cafe).

At the core of this is learning how to learn, and then dedicating yourself to doing that somehow, no matter how pointless whatever hooks your attention might seem to others. I figured out at one point how to alter my visual perception frame rate to slow down and stall, just for a moment, a spinning (on high) ceiling fan’s blades. I can never get them to stand perfectly still but insomnia is cruel and the nights are long, and it’s fun to imagine what my brain is doing to brainwave sync rates across my visual cortex to make this work. (If seizure-prone, maybe don’t try this alone.) Unexpectedly, even this has had a practical value: when a passenger in trains or cars, I can consciously relax my eye muscles now and let the landscape motion blur by rather than saccade-focusing constantly. Hooray!

Every useless hobby skill has an unforeseen opportunity to be valuable :)

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That tutorial has opened up many doors for me
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You will never know if it was his moustache, his clothes or the way he enters a room that made him so successful with women.
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You could also say life is too short to waste time retying inferior drawstrings. If learning the knot takes 5 minutes, it seems like it could easily save you time overall.
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I've been tying shorts for more than 35 years. I can do it with my eyes closed. I can do it while running, or while swimming. I don't need to look down, finagle an end into an ampersand and whatnot. I don't have to worry about grabbing the right loop+end combo to increase or decrease tightness. I just undo the knot, and redo it according to preference.

I'd argue I'm just about as fast adjusting my shorts than this guy in the video.

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If you're spending that much time tying drawstrings I think you've got bigger problems.
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If it takes 5 minutes to learn, and if you have 30 more years of needing to tie drawstrings, and you need to tie on average one drawstring per week, you will come out ahead if it saves you 0.19 seconds tying or retying per drawstring.
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Ah, but are you remembering to discount the future time saving, to get the net present value of the time savings?
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Maybe he's a "back-door man"!
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I was looking for the comic and found this:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

(I swear there was a better one)

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Why not just buy clothes that fit properly?

I haven't tied a drawstring or used a belt in maybe 15 years, when I realized it was worth finding clothes that fit well. They're more comfortable and look better.

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The Ashley Book of Knots has 3857 numbered entries. Each is suited to specific requirements. Some are just fun or decorative. It can be a hobby to learn more.

Domain people might have a dozen knots to get their job done. I just took a swift water rescue class; we got by with maybe five total for our situation.

Tying shorts? Maybe two or three are best suited.

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I think if you occasionally tie gym shorts and don't have needs around fit, this is correct.

But if you're a nurse and wear scrubs all the time, then it might become worth spending time upfront perfecting it.

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I don’t see how this is complicated, it’s simply a technique. The creator of the video has no stated agenda, and it’s on the viewer to decide whether or not they want to learn and apply this method. Lots of people find joy in solving the little things in life that would otherwise cause them frustration. One of the top comments on the video is a nurse saying they’d been tying their scrubs with bunny ears for 30 years and always had to keep adjusting them. Certainly it isn’t overly complicated for them.
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The more you know and practice with knots, the definition of “simple” shifts. I stopped using bungee cords in my car since I got really good at lashing stuff down with paracord.
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I got through an entire day yesterday in massively oversized gym shorts, by simply forming a standard loop, and wrapping it _twice_. That extra friction (the second wrap) has worked for years on shoes, boots, and, very large shorts

I will not be learning a fancy knot because I have no need

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The difference is the Ian Loop is adjustable.
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What needs adjusting? My waist size is not dynamic.
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You will....knot ?
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This a hundred times. Smart by half.
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You should be on a beach without internet connection then.
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That requires money. (GOTO makeMoney)
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Eh, knots are a source of joy.
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Min-max all the things! Overengineer everything!

/s

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