Tuesday Thoughts | 12 November 2024 | Odd Socks

If you pay very close attention to my feet on homecoming weekend, you’ll often notice that I am wearing two different coloured socks – one purple, one yellow (ahem gold) – in fact I bought the pack of socks the ‘set’ came in specifically so I would have those colours of socks, for this purpose.

It’s the one time of the year I will knowingly wear ‘mismatched’ socks; in fact if you are paying attention most of the rest of year (and by the way, if you are, that’s a bit odd), you’ll either see me not wearing socks – which is quite common – or wearing the same (not the same same, just the same style) black socks as I was wearing the day before.

Every few years I walk into Costco and buy two or three packs of black socks, and wear them until they start to pill, then I dump the whole mess into the closest textile recycling bin, and start over again. I’m not quite Jobs-esque in my ‘uniform’, but I refuse to spend even a second of my average day considering what I’m going to wear under my shoes.

Its no surprise to regular readers that a significant portion of my daily routines are just that – routines, I plan my meals, format my packing lists by anticipated activities and outfits, and even started #TuesdayThoughts originally to keep me consistent with my weekly writing practice.

What you may not know is that my ‘WHY’ for all of this planning, and habit building, and repetition, is to allow me to have more free time, more opportunities to go with the flow, and less mental clutter to keep me distracted from what actually matters.

When you see me deviate from my regular black socks – or white ankle socks if I am going to the gym, or otherwise wearing my running shoes for some reason – its always intentional; although I happen to also have an extensive collection of Christmas socks.

As someone who subscribes to the organization rule of ‘make it as easy to put away, as it is to leave it out’, it might surprise you to learn that, all of those socks (at least the clean ones) are currently sitting in my drawer balled into neat little pairs.

Sometimes it behooves us to choose to do a little extra work on the front end, to allow us a seamless experience day to day – this also makes the aforementioned packing lists much easier to follow. Each outfit (unless I either don’t need socks, or will be wearing tights) is assigned either a pair of black socks, or a pair of white socks, and then I toss in a couple of extras if I am going somewhere near water or its likely to be rainy (like I did a few weeks ago when I went to Seattle with nothing but rain in the forecast).

So, what does my odd socks habits have to do with anything? How we do the little things becomes how we do everything, something I need/use every day (at least in the colder months – I actually HATE wearing shoes and socks), becomes the pace setter for how I do the bigger things.

This week’s call to action, figure out the small stuff first, then use the roadmap to sort out the big stuff.

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