Shanghai Bob

I don’t want anyone to say I haven’t been making good use of my time off.

I was reading the Economist online and saw a comment in the business section that YouTube was changing people’s lives — for example by teaching them how to tie their shoelaces. I was dubious.

I did a search for “how to tie your shoes” on youtube.com and found over a thousand relevant tutorials.  Many of them demonstrated a method that is at least twice as fast as the (three) methods I already knew.

Let’s say I wasted a second a day for the years I’ve been tying my shoes using the less efficient method.  That’s about two wasted weeks, if I don’t account for the years I lived in Japan (during which I wore mainly shoes without laces).  That’s two weeks that I could have devoted to watching other “youtubetorials” on how to make my life even more efficient. That could count as life-changing.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 7:59 pm and is filed under explanations.