You’re crammed in the back of a crowded elevator, squeezed between two sweaty giants, and nobody else is getting off on your floor. You push, pull, and step on toes, just barely escaping before the doors close. What a miserable way to interact with your fellow humans, but tens of thousands of people endure this misery every day on elevators, subways, and buses around the world.

There is a better way. Non-verbal signalling is a skill we’ve known for the past 400,000 years. A single glance at your significant other tells you whether they’re having a bad day. Shoot, a single glance at you tells your dog whether you’re having a bad day. Humans (and most animals) are expert interpreters of unconscious gestures and emotions, so why don’t we create conscious gestures to signal each other?

Let’s agree to this simple system for the next stop coming up:

1. If this is your stop, face towards the door.
2. If this is not your stop, face away from the door.

This system is beautiful in its simplicity. Intuitively, the direction you’re facing naturally corresponds to where you want to go. In fact, the only change from what you normally do is number two. This is crucial, though, for the same reason negative RSVP’s are crucial. I know plenty of people who only RSVP if they plan on going, leaving the party planner to guess whether the remaining people are staying home or just forgot to respond. If everyone follows our elevator system, there will be no more guessing. No more “Chill dude, I’m getting off here too.” We also find a simple corollary for our system.

3. If you are looking somebody in the eyes, swap places with them.

Brilliant! This system is so simple you can follow it without consciously thinking about it, and you’ve now turned the cohort of people into an automatic self-sorting algorithm. Are there more complex systems which can forecast multiple stops in advance and sort everyone properly? Of course, but the trade-off is ease of adoption and execution. We apply 80/20, as we do to everything else, to find the greatest benefit for the least cost. Even such a simple system only works, however, if everybody joins in.

Why don’t we see such systems implemented more often? Sure, there are some, such as forming a line to wait for something, but it’s hard to change the will of the masses. Humans, as a species, get away with being terribly inefficient because we assume that what we’ve always done is the best way to keep doing things. In this case, we assume that standing around facing whichever direction pleases us is the best way to stand. This isn’t going to change overnight, but if you like the idea and your friends do too then maybe one day you’ll have less stress in your daily commute.