Had a talk with an old building super that made me rethink my whole approach

I was swapping out a controller in a 70s building downtown last Tuesday, and the building super came up to chat while I was working. He pointed out how I was tracing wires back to the main panel one at a time, and he asked why I didn't just label everything as I pulled it. I told him that's how I always did it, and he just shook his head and said, "You're wasting half your day on steps you could skip." He showed me his method where he tags each wire with a little flag of tape before even disconnecting anything. It hit different because he wasn't being a know-it-all, he was just trying to save me time. I tried it on the next three floors and cut my time by about 40 minutes per controller. Has anyone else had an older guy in the building show you something that made you feel like you've been doing it backwards?

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walker.alex4d ago

That little tape trick alone probably saves more than a few minutes per wire, but the real win is how it cuts out the mental overhead of re-identifying everything later. I used to spend a solid 15 minutes just second-guessing my own memory on which wire went where, and now it's just right there in front of me. Honestly, those old supers have seen enough bad days to know what shortcuts actually work, and it's wild how often they're right if you just listen.