If your shoe laces break you can use them with a fraction of the original length by tying a knot in one end and threading them through the holes.
qjs

Yes, that's a common mistake. He ties a Granny at 1:14. He ties a Reef at 1:50. The knots look similar, but a Reef holds. A Granny does not.

Nice! To think I've been doing it all wrong for 40 years!

Granny knot versus square knot?

one of those simple things, to make corporate America think outside the box. I used to do the same with a banana. I'd hand out two bananas in a crowd, ask each of them to open it, a simple thing. The follow up command was that they couldn't use the normal method of snapping the stem with their fingers. Usually they would cut it in half with a pocket knife, or bite into the shaft to rip open the skin, or mutilate it, things that just sort of defeated eating a banana like you normally would but was funny to observe because isn't there only one way to peel a banana? I turned it upside down and ripped off the bottom (now top) of the banana and it would peel exactly like ripping the stem off. The user now, in one fell swoop discards the little brown stem at the base of the banana that no one eats anyway and the (inverted) stem makes a handy dandy organic 'stick' to eat the banana like a Popsicle.

Yup, I've been doing it the wrong way for over 30 years now. One of our older business partners who comes by the office has been trying to retrain me to do it this way for several years now. It's hard to break 30+ years of training, no matter how "wrong" it is. He called the first way tying a granny knot, and the second he called a square knot. Knot (pun intended ) really sure what the second knot is called but he called it a square knot. At any rate, unlearning to tie the granny knot all the time is tough. When I'm in a hurry I seem to always fall back on that granny knot.

How do you rip open the bottom of the banana without mutilating it?

hijack mode on
here's how
hijack mode off

However it happened, this is the way (direction around the bow) that I was taught. I'll thank my mother the next time I am on the phone with her. Thanks the for link.