How to find your pencil sharpener.

You know desire paths? Like, when people cut across the grass so often that the repetitious erosion of footfall accretes and you get the unintentional creation of a more efficient, reusable walkway?

Yeah. That's a desire path. When strangers' seemingly random independent decisions publicly accumulate into a pattern that suggests a more desirable if less formal option, you might just have yourself a desire path. At least by my made-up definition.

Now, like any lazy person, I'm partial to desire paths not least because it means less walking for me. But, I'm also grateful for the accumulated effort of all the earlier lazy people whose own lack of energy and ambition made it all possible. Even though we've never met, their laziness unintentionally benefits my own laziness.

Heck, my own walking on that path plays a role in strengthening the clarity of the trail. So, I guess I'm helping.

This is how you get ants.

Off the dome, this feels related to what some people call "the wisdom of crowds," but it also reminds me of some fascinating stuff E.O. Wilson taught us about ants.

For example, when a given little guy discovers a promising-looking path, he may leave a "trail pheromone." See, he drops him a scent grenade that tells passers-by that we just might be onto something here, so other little guys should maybe come help him check it out. Then, as other ants pick up that scent and take up the treasure trail, they also leave their own promising-smelling stink, and that just attracts even more comrades to the party, et cetera.

You know. Ant desire paths.

Queen of the hill.

Now, of course, ants are far better organized than we are, plus they all love to gossip and participate in light frottage (citation needed), so even the way they rub up against each other back in the nest can pass on information about all sorts of things—including where the good new trails are. Which is insane to me.

Point is, I think a fair amount about desire paths and how we might get better at noticing where they may (or should) be forming. Talking here about realizing or acknowledging that an easier or more intuitive path could exist. And, not just for finding a shorter walk to the Whataburger.

But, as you know, you are not an ant. Which is probably bad news if you crave an intense social life and working long hours for a thicc queen. Still, as non-ants, I suspect we benefit from our ability to not only be aware of desire paths, but to have the self-knowledge to remember we can discover or construct our own paths rather than just waiting for somebody else to accidentally do it for us.

Not in spite of traditional, "official" trails, but sometimes specifically because of them. Sometimes the old ways stop working, and we don't even bother trying something different, because—well—these are The Old Ways.

Everybody has a plan.

You know what I'm talking about. Sometimes life's official sidewalks are just really fucking stupid. Even in your own day-to-day.

This is where the mail goes (even though that leads to those hateful piles). This is where the clean laundry goes (even though it'd be nice to have the dinner table for dinner). And for sure, this—this—is where my pencil sharpener goes. More on that in a second.

Unsurprisingly, this leads circuitously to one of those insane-sounding pieces of advice that pegs me as a real weirdo:

Try always to store something in the first place you just looked for it. Not "where it's pretty" or "where we used to keep it" or "where we have more room." It goes where it goes—not where you think it goes.

In my experience, this way of thinking can feel pretty peculiar to people who regard themselves as tidy and organized, or who like to pretend like they and their barefoot Aryan children live in Dwell Magazine.

But, as a retired project manager and recovering productivity guru, I can assure you that there's definitely something to this. There's power in realizing something as simple as where something should go. Where something lives.

I mean. I imagine you're a studious top-down thinker who always turns things in on time and never needs to write anything on a calendar, but are you sure there aren't some potential improvement opportunities in the layout of your own mind campus?

Seriously. Why was that given thing not where you thought it was? Why was it not in the first place you looked? Or the third or the sixth or the ninth place for that matter. Is there any chance that the only thing worse than having no organization may be having a Potemkin Village of confidently dumb organization?

If your mental model says this is where this goes, and yet your brain keeps looking for it in other places, where's our disconnect?

Again with the pencils.

Listen: this is a very small thought technology, and it'd be easy to exaggerate its depth or profundity in the interest of trying to sound smart. But, this is not a TED talk. It's just a blog post I wrote after The Big Game explicitly to help you find your pencil sharpener. So, let's get to it.

I have a kind of pencil sharpener that I really like. It's made by a German company called KUM (grow up), and it's their Long Point Automatic Pencil Sharpener. It's a two-stage sharpener that makes it fast and easy to get your pencil exactly the way you like it.

Like scissors, Sharpies, utility knives, and IDenti-pens, I own many of these pencil sharpeners. Not because I need to sharpen five pencils at once, but because I mislay them. Or because, say, someone "borrowed" my pencil sharpener. Point is, I could never find my nice pencil sharpener.

Then, at some point last year, I started noticing an odd thing. I kept having this weird feeling that there should be a pencil sharpener on a high shelf in our kitchen cabinets, way up by where we keep the avocado spray and the cupcake decorations. Which is, admittedly, not where a pencil sharpener ordinarily lives. But, let's set that aside for now.

But, then, I remembered how my young person used to "borrow" Daddy's special German pencil sharpener on the reg, and had never once returned it to me. Which is fine. But, it had given me the bright idea to "hide" my fancy pencil sharpener on a high shelf where the child was less likely to find and relocate it. And it worked.

That was years ago.

And yet, now, whenever I need a pencil sharpener, my brain still thinks that's where it should be. That's where my brain thinks a pencil sharpener lives.

So, you know what? That's where I officially keep my pencil sharpener now. Up on that high shelf in the kitchen is where at least one of my fancy KUM Long Point Automatic Pencil Sharpeners is always available.

And, I can always find my pencil sharpener in the very first place that I always look. Which is up by the avocado oil. Where the pencil sharpener now officially lives. Got it? Okay, then.

Anyway.

Listen. I get it. I really do.

Let's all have a big laugh at the poorly socialized man whose disordered thinking has made him believe that our entirely sensible world should be made as weird as necessary to prevent him from ever needing to think again.

Nah, that's not it. Although, that is unquestionably very appealing to me.

No, I'm saying something different. I'm saying that you probably have some mental desire paths that may not be reflected in your unassailably lucid opera of conscious decision-making. I don't know, man. It's your brain.

I'm just suggesting you start watching for potential desire paths and avoid the compulsion to immediately relocate life's stuff to "where it's pretty" or "where we used to keep it" or "where we have more room."

So, maybe set aside my own grave peculiarities, and get more okay with your own. I'm fine revealing my own freakshow if it encourages you to privately, quietly, mindfully make peace with your own freakshow.

And the next time you can't find something in the first place you looked for it, maybe consider where it wants to live. There might be a desire path that just needs a few more lazy steps to obviate that dumb sidewalk you currently feel obligated to use.