As a student getting a good pair of shoes was always a three way decision between cost vs comfort vs life of shoes. Often the comfort factor will be sacrificed to get a new pair and then the trouble starts, I will spend good enough time to adjust to the new pair. Not a single day will pass without the shoe bites bothering me, but the flip side is that I will take good care of my shoes. Whenever I pick it up to try to make any adjustments I also end up polishing the shoes. Once my feet got adjusted to the new shoes then I would stop giving a second thought about them, the last time I would have polished it was when I tried to make some adjustments to it. With less care given to it after it started fitting well, the shoe usually needed replacement well before its lifetime because of less care given to it.

The case is also similar to how people are treated professionally or personally, there is a tendency for people to devote attention to fix relationships with trouble makers and toxic people; but not give enough care to the ones who are fitting in to our sphere. There was an article from Forbes that people who stay at the same company for more than two years earn lesser than job hoppers whose performance was poor.

Why does this happen? We are not consciously geared to this behaviour, most of the time there would be short term priorities that will kick in which will grab more of our time that needs fixing; resulting in a state where the ones that are working for us well aren’t the one getting the attention. The squeaky wheels gets the attention, the aching body part gets the balm, the biting shoe gets the polish. Eventually we will get more reactive, rely on noise and markers to effectively function which is a very expensive lifestyle instead of preempting something and making course corrections.

We should aim to keep things noise free; be it people, career or possessions. Getting things done was one book which helped in channeling the energy to find the list of things that I had in mind and keep track of them. The five step process described in the book helps to move the chaos into order. Learn to capture all that needs care, clarify if there is an action needed, organize and review the priorities periodically and do things as per your priorities. Keep it stress free, you will learn to care for your shoes even when it fits perfectly.