I think orderliness and organizedness is probably a little highly overrated. I have constantly been reminded about its importance right from a very young age. Our education system emphasizes it a lot, so do our parents, same with our offices. People who are a orderly are highly appreciated. But more importantly people who thrive in chaos are looked down. Perhaps it is time to start recognizing the C-Society of folks like the recently formed
B-Society for late risers. I have been noticing in the last few years that it is probably not so bad to live in the midst of chaos.
I am not talking about chaos in all things that you do, i am talking specifically about disorderliness in things that are not really that important. Whether it is the wires, my personal belongings, all those miscellaneous downloads in your laptop, i think it actually makes sense to live in chaos. I see a couple of problems with being organized. First is the cost associated with orderliness. It is a lot of overhead to keep oneself organized. You need to constantly keep doing it. The moment you stop doing it, you are starting to create chaos. And what do you get by being organized? You probably save a couple of minutes in finding things, or answering folks, or in general, making progress. I think we should start appreciating chaos, and learn to cope with it. As long as the lack of order does not really affect you, it is perfectly ok to have it as is, and when it is causing trouble, all you need to do is just bring in enough order into the system to make it less painful.
Labels: general
