​Hard to say if that headline above resonates with people. Typically, we reverse that phrase: “Creating order of chaos.” We want to bring rationality and sense to complicated things. Simplify life. Make things easier. Not make things messier unnecessarily.
 
Recently though I was struck by a coworker who couldn’t find something he was looking for. Like me, he was relatively new to our place of business. When you start a new job or moved to a new house, that’s when you must create a new order of things. You pay attention to where something is filed away or stored.

In this case, he was looking for a document. Initially, he could not find it. But, because he hadn’t created his own sense of personal chaos yet (by being in the job longer and creating more electronic and paper storage places to lose or find things), he knew right where to go. Because there were only a couple of options, he not only found the document, but something else he was looking for as well.

That’s an advantage when you start somewhere new. You don’t have enough time to create a maze of steps to find something.

Oddly though, the way the mind seems to work, as we add layers to our personal and professional lives, we develop an internal mechanism to find things. I know this is true of me, my wife, many coworkers I know. None of us can put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, yet we retain a sense of order and calm in terms of knowing where we place and store things despite adding layers of complications the longer we live or work someplace.

Think, for example, about your home. Consider where old pictures are kept, mementos from childhood, clothes from your kids (if you’re an older parent). You know exactly where to go to dig them up.

The same holds true of, for the most part, regarding your files on the computer. You have things categorized in your mind, a sort of logical extension, and you know right where to go, which folder to access, to find something relative to taxes, vacations, family history or outside interests.
 
You don’t need to write these things down. They come to you easily because your mind works a certain way and you know intuitively and historically where to go.
 
That’s why, it seems to me, after you are comfortable with a place (your home or where you work), sometimes you forget where you put stuff. It doesn’t matter. It will come back to you where it is. You’re able to take order and create chaos because your deeper senses will overcome it.

I don’t think any of us understand this consciously. Somewhere in our subconscious, this syndrome works things out and we are allowed to not pay attention as strictly as necessary, since we’ll figure where we put something through the normal course of our daily duties.
 
When you first move or start a new job, you put everything back where it belongs at night. It must stay orderly. You need to remember where everything is, get a sense of knowing.
 
The switch flips when the files and piles start to grow exponentially, building and massing until you allow yourself that hidden sense that you “just know” where things are. Then you’ve arrived and know you can create chaos out of order.

​Memory is a strange beast. We all remember things differently. We forget things we thought we knew. Sometimes a name comes back to us at a strange time of day when hours earlier we were working hard to bring it back but couldn’t get it to the tip of our tongue despite the mental attention we gave it.
 
All of us struggle with this stuff at different times of life depending on our age, how strongly we focus on something and just our general ability to remember something that happened to us. There are many people who don’t pay any attention to what is going on around them, and they couldn’t tell you if it was Hurricane Florence or Hurricane Harvey that hit Wilmington, N.C. Their minds are elsewhere.

For those of us well-intentioned and desirous of remembering important details and events in our lives, you’d think there’d be some tried and true ways to file things away for retrieval on demand by our brains. There are.

I’ve learned a few things over the years, and here’s one of them to help – name association. Next time you meet someone and want to remember their name, use this tactic.
 
I mentioned it to an elder gentleman who works out at the fitness center the same two days I go there. We shoot the breeze frequently, I crack a joke about his silly hats, and he comes back with a retort about my tee shirt. He’s a fun guy to be around and a role model to stay engaged and healthy as you age.

But I don’t know his damn name. I’ve been seeing him for almost two years and we’ve never gotten around to that. It reached the awkward point where it was hard to even ask. So, not being the bashful type, I went right up to him and asked anyway, “Hey, what the heck is your name?”
 
“Ron. And yours?”
 
“Dave.”
 
“Oh, I won’t remember that.”
 
“Sure you can. Here’s how. Think of another Dave you know. Next time you see me, think of that Dave and some other characteristic that stands out. I’ll remember you as Ron Juan, a nickname I have for another Ron I know because of how he romanced women.”
 
“That sounds like a good idea,” he replied, and we talked some more, harassed each other, and went on to the next machine to pound weights. Two days later, we saw each other.
 
“Hey, Ron, how’s it going?


“Not bad, Dave the lawn mower man, good to see you.”
 
“Lawn mower man?”
 
“That’s how I remember you.”
 
I have no idea how I became the lawn mower man because I don’t remember talking about cutting grass, but who the heck cares. He calls me Dave now every time we see each other. We’ve made a connection and a friendship has developed.
 
Sometimes you file away a name and remember it. Names, like paperwork, are sometimes easily categorized and come to you with no problem. But if you forget a name or where you placed a file, report or newsletter, give it that additional mental attention to direct you back on the path you took.
 
It will help in your friendships and your work environment. As long as you can figure out how you became the lawn mower man.

​How we meet people is random. How we meet people who have the same name is even more random.
 
Recently talking with a friend about this subject, we discussed how you get thrown into a room with a college roommate, and often become friends for life. Who would have thought that beforehand? “Oh, when I go to college, my roommate and I will be friends for the next 50 years. I can just feel it.”
 
No. Instead, you go to college not knowing what to expect. You don’t know if you’ll like each other. You don’t know if you’ll stay in touch after you graduate, if you graduate. It’s fascinating to consider how people are thrown into our lives, and whether we keep those people close to us over the years.
 
I met my namesake Dave Simon over 30 years ago. It’s a good story.
 
At the time I was a journalist in Washington, D.C. I reported on EPA, and spent time in the building interviewing officials, digging up reports, going to press briefings and researching issues. Part of that meant spending time in the EPA docket room to look at proposed regulations and the comments on them.
 
During the first year or two in that job, I heard a woman who worked there say over the phone, “Hey, we’re meeting Dave Simon this weekend. Want to come with us?” Something like that anyway. It was the name that made me stick around.

As she hung up, I said, “You know a Dave Simon? That’s my name.”

“Yes, we went to school together,” she replied, elaborating on the school, what Dave did for a living and that he played in a local men’s baseball league. I didn’t think much of any of this until I began playing in the league as well.  There are a lot of Dave Simon’s in the world, so maybe I was destined to meet one.

At some point after that, during infield practice for our team in the league, I heard someone from first base yell across to me, “Hey Dave.”

“What?,” I responded.
 
“Not you. I mean Dave Simon,” he yelled back.
 
“That’s me,” I said, looking around, then realizing Dave Simon was right next to me, fielding grounders and shooting them over to first. We laughed, shook hands, introduced ourselves, and a long-term friendship was born.
 
Having the same name doesn’t ensure you’ll get along. But there’s enough craziness in both us Dave’s to have kept us in touch over all those years since, occasionally talking on the phone, emailing and once in a great while getting to see each other in person and enjoy the face-to-face time.
 
We’re separated by distance, but either of us could pick up the phone and we’d sync up within minutes regarding our respective lives. Friendships are to cherish. Sometimes we may even find someone with the same name and that we have much in common.
 
Meeting people, even someone with your name is random. It’s not given you’ll be friends or like that person. But if you do, it’s worth keeping that person in your life. It’s one of life’s little treasures