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.
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.