Well, first of all, I don’t carry it all on my person – “stuff in my pockets” is a bit stretched. I keep a lot of it in my backpack, the Vertx Ready Pack 2.0 I touched on a bit here (look for a more detailed dive into the pack itself soon).
One useful item I was thoughtfully gifted recently is this cable organizer – you’ll note the inside is obnoxious green, which is fantastic. I’ve seen far too many bags, backpacks and organizers that are black or dark gray on the inside, and it’s just impossible to actually see anything in them!
You can see several items I’ve profiled already, as well as a sneak peek of some I will profile in the future. The biggest thing for me with this bag is that it keeps my stuff in one spot – the principle of “a place for everything and everything in its place” applies here; it’s not so much about what belongs where in any sort of absolute sense, but rather about consistency.
This is the same principle that applies in emergency response – on an ambulance, the airway roll on each truck is stocked the same way, on a fire engine, the hose is loaded the same way each time, in a squad car, the rifles are stored in the same place, etc.
Obviously these cases are more about simplicity under stress, but if you apply those principles to your everyday use, you’ll find them coming in handy more often than not – in my case, preventing me from losing my stuff! If I know the power cord is always in the same spot, I can immediately realize it’s missing and resolve the situation, for example.
You’ll see recurrent themes around here – simplicity, and function first are both core principles that I try to abide by most of the time, and they really do make a difference in everyday life, believe it or not.
-T