Disorder is the order of nature and that’s OK
“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” — Henry Miller
Earlier this week, when I was dropping off my son for his morning soccer practice, I was overcome with a strong sense of unease as we were going to be a little late for the session. Students turning up just about in time or a little late used to be the norm until two or three months ago. To remedy this situation, their coach reiterated the importance of being on time and anyone who was late was made to stand out and not allowed into the practice session for that day. This fixed the situation, at least for a while. Now, tardiness seems to have crept back in, again.
One of the constant reprimands from my wife is that I do not contribute towards keeping our house organized. This is justified because evidently, I do not seem to have the “house-decorum” gene in us. Tongue in cheek, I defend my indifference with the quote — “a well-kept house reflects a life not well lived in”. But even when we keep at it with sincere efforts, our house seems to give into disarray sooner than later, unmistakably.
“No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.” — Mason Cooley
Without enough policing, crime always increases no matter how virtuous society is. Throughout history there was always a need for some kind of bonafide force (like police today) to maintain order in a society — this was equally true for prosperous as well as impoverished societies.
Good health requires discipline and a suitable regimen of eating, sleeping and exercising habits. Take your eyes off that regimen and your parameters start to falter — blood pressure starts to sneak out of recommended range, insulin sensitivity starts to reduce, sleep becomes inconsistent, weight starts to fluctuate etc.
Wealth dissipates if not properly managed. Careers dwindle if focus wanes. Mighty empires decay and fall. Great organizations lose their prominence and give way to other organizations. Order yielding to chaos is an essential aspect of Universe.
Maintaining order requires constant effort because the default tendency of things seems to be towards disorder and decay. This is a rather depressing thing to write (or read). And my point of writing this blog is not to spread dismay or pessimism. On the contrary, it is to elicit optimism by sharing what I discovered in terms of addressing it.
“Chaos is inherent in all compound things. Strive on with diligence.” — Buddha
Even the recognition that the default nature of the world is to give into disorder, has power to liberate you. As opposed to dismaying over eventual disorder, you can expect it and prepare to deal with it. Better yet, you can get more value for your time by putting more of your focus on things that matter the most to you and tolerating lower standards of order in other matters. For example, ever since we moved into a house (as opposed to an apartment) about a year back, there have been constant demands on my time for something or the other to be done on the house. Twenty-four hours in a day have not been sufficient in dealing with these demands. This takes time away from more important things for me like writing blogs and developing my personal finance practice. After all, we have only so much energy and willpower available to spend in a day. Now, we decided to focus only the top priority project on the house and put all projects have been put on ice. As another example, my reading wish list keeps getting longer with books on all kinds of topics — any time I come across a valid book recommendation I add it to my wish list. But I read only those books that cater to my main interest areas — decision making, thinking, cognition and learning.
Bottomline
“Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man.” — Henry Brooks Adams
Even a well-designed schedule for your day gets undone in no time by the din and hum of a typical day. Your time will be encroached by frivolous meetings and other low impact but urgent items. In this treacherous assault on your time, non-urgent important priorities end up being default casualty. Over time, this can become overwhelming, zapping you out of energy and vitality. You may feel helpless and rudderless. You may feel like a victim of circumstances. A good starting point to turn this around is to recognize that Universe is not particularly bent on messing you up — it’s just that disorder and chaos are essential aspects of Universe’s nature. There is no point fighting against the might of the Universe — you can’t win this fight. Instead, it is better to focus on keeping your top two or three priorities in order and focus just enough on the other items such that they don’t become hinderances. This way, the general sense of disorder will not bother you and more importantly, you start seeing your priority items getting more and more traction.
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Thanks for taking time to read this. In this newsletter, I share my learnings that could help you improve your decisions and make meaningful progress on your goals and desires. I share stuff that I have personally experienced or experimented with. If you find this newsletter worthwhile, please do share it with others — of course, only if you do not mind it.
A bit on my background
I worked in India and the USA with most of my work experience with large global organizations. My last corporate role was the Head of Technology for “Treasury and Trade Management Solutions” for Citigroup South Asia cluster. At Citi, I set up from my Business Unit and grew it from a team size of 1 to over 1900 Citi employees in a span of 7–8 years.
I quit Citi in 2021 to focus exclusively on my interest area of improving decision making. In the last 2 years, I studied this topic closely and developed a training course to systematically improve decision making ability. I’m also an Investment Advisor (RIA) registered with the Securities and the Exchange Board of India (SEBI). As an RIA, I analyze and prepare financial plans to help people achieve their financial goals.
I have done MBA in Strategy and Finance from Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota and B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
More about me
Rama on Linkedin (CV and Blogs)
