Now, this isn’t a productivity tip per se, but it really stood out to me while browsing Lifehacker, and I think it deserves a mention.

If you own or have owned a CD player, iPod, or any music player for that matter, you have probably used earbuds, and experienced the trouble of wrapping them up effectively. If you simply wrap them around your fingers in a loop, the cords will tangle themselves in your pocket, and when you take them out, the whole thing will be in knots. My personal solution has been to wrap them around the music player, but in some cases you just need to wrap headphones on their own (travel, storage, etc.).

You can read the article and watch the video: here.

For a summary as well as other solutions, read below.

In short, the technique described involves wrapping the cord around your four fingers like normal, but then wrapping around the loop, and pulling the jack through.

1. Wrap cord around your four fingers until you have six inches left.
2. Wrap horizontally around the other loop 3 or 4 times, to hold it together.
3. To secure, pull the jack through the loop. You can safely store your ear buds without worry of them getting tangled.
4. To unravel, simply reverse the jack out of the loop, and then pull on the jack and ear pieces.

Other Solutions:

1. Same idea as above, but in step one, wrap in a figure-8 pattern around your index and pinkie finger. This further prevents tangling in the pocket.
2. Wrap the cord around your music player.
3. Use retractable ear-buds
4. Use a commercial headphone clip.