S06E025, Green Stitching, Andy B 2 Minute Video

Download - Listen - Transcription

Andy B shares a practical story about differentiating identical socks with a bit of green stitching, demonstrating that sometimes super simple - and messy - solutions work better than neat ones. While neatness may be essential for formal clothing or specific contexts, a scraggly approach solved the sock problem by making it easy to spot his socks from his son's.

He encourages viewers to consider that the neatest solution isn't always the most effective. Sometimes, being practical and visible achieves better results than prioritising appearance.

Just a thought...

Andy B

Listen
 

Download

Transcript

So, another Andy B two-minute video. This one is all about green stitching and socks. What’s that got to do with anything? Well, I have a particular brand of socks that I really like. They fit very well with the same brand of boots, and they actually work brilliantly together. Funny that. One of my sons has the same brand of socks, but with a different brand of boots.

Now, we both have the same socks in the same colour coming through the wash, and when it comes to separating them, they look exactly the same. We could, I suppose, get a DNA scanner out to work out whose socks are whose based on residue, but that doesn’t feel particularly practical. So how do we figure it out?

I came up with a really ingenious, super simple idea: a little bit of green stitching inside the top. It’s not very neat, and it can’t be, actually — I’ll explain why in a minute. It has to be a bit longer than it should be, so it’s a bit scraggly and doesn’t look great. But when you take the washing out of the dryer or off the line, you simply look at the top of the sock. I’ve got my socks with the green stitching, and my son has his plain ones. It’s very simple.

When we first put the stitching in, it was neat and disappeared into the fabric because the socks are quite squishy. That made it useless. So, I developed a much simpler system: a bunch of cotton, a couple of rough knots, stitch it through, and let it hang down about a centimetre or so. You don’t feel it when wearing the socks, and it’s really obvious.

Sometimes, we like to make things neat and tidy. For fancy clothes — a posh dress or a wedding suit — we wouldn’t want green stitching hanging down looking messy. In those cases, it’s worth taking the time to make things perfect. But with the socks, the neat solution failed. A rough, messy approach worked better because it could actually be seen.

My thought for you today: when solving a problem, remember that the neatest solution isn’t always the best. Just a thought.