I recently bought a few new pairs of socks. These are almost identical to the socks I already have with one exception – instead of being black, they’re dark blue.
This presents a problem in the morning because the socks are similar enough to be indistinguishable when grouped together in my ‘sock box’ yet are a clear enough mismatch to the outside world that I remain interested in getting the correct pairing (1). For a few days after my purchase, I was reaching in, grabbing a pair of socks, and hoping to strike gold (or black, or dark blue). If the pair didn’t match, I would just keep grabbing extra ones until I had the right pair. What a waste of time!
One day, I realized it would be a lot easier if I took three socks at a time instead of two. With three socks, I would be guaranteed a match (and an extra sock). I started doing this for a few days – I’d pull a trio, find the matching pair, and return the extra sock to the box.
I reached peak efficiency when I understood that if I left the extra sock on top of the box, I would actually only have to pull two new socks per morning to get a match. The math is simple – I was guaranteed to either match one of the new socks with the sock from the day before or I would pull a new matching pair.
To put it another way, these days I’m doing exactly what I used to do in the past – pulling two socks out of the sock box each morning.
Footnotes (!) / and other bad puns
1. What is a ‘sock box’?
I keep my socks in an old shoebox. The way I see it, it’s like a sock drawer for cheap-ass people.
