Has anyone found “disorganization” to be a general problem plaguing so many random things in life?
I’ve found it to be a worse problem than a bunch of other things, particularly because it’s not viewed as a “sin” or “unethical”, it’s just “being messy” or an “an expression of the creative lifestyle”.
Whereas dirty things are thought to possibly create illness, being a little “disorganized” isn’t viewed as being that harmful. It’s not like people are doing drugs or something.
I’ve found it to be enormously harmful for this reason that it’s not viewed as being a problem, so it can just grow into all these unrelated problems.
I don’t know what would be a good example; maybe there’s the growing national debt, with no real plan on how to fix it. It seems like either no public debts (that in a way “no one” is responsible to pay back) should have been taken on, because there are simply incentives to take on the debt until the government crashes, it seems.
The quote was shared I think that a “disorganized space is a disorganized mind”. I’ve come to believe this in my experience; it’s a tough call sometimes because some people live “messy” lives without it causing visible harm. But often physically disorganized spaces lead to lost items, wasted time, disorganized ways of living and choices, and so on.
Maybe it’s why places like the military want their soldiers to make their bed and dress sharply and all that; in themselves, sure, maybe one could fight effectively and still be messy. But it seems like it creates a mentality of organized living.
Has anyone else found “disorganization” in general to be a problem, and if you got things organized, how did you bring things in to order?
splinter@hilariouschaos.com 7 months ago
I think it depends a lot on you as a person. I like to wing things, I don’t like to be scripted. For example, I like to walk around a new place and find shit that interests me and go do it. If I need to talk in front of people, I will never read off a piece of paper. Generally speaking I’m reasonably impulsive and like to improvise.
This drives very organized people crazy, since they need the opposite of this, they want certainty, they need a plan, a written speech, etc.
I think the military pushes being very organized because that saves your life, soldiers need to follow agreed methods, they need to stick to the training, they need to do things a certain way and obey orders. This doesn’t mean not having initiative.
Not being overly organized doesn’t necessarily mean being messy, I’m not really messy for example, but I’m going to clean up based on when it suits me rather than on a set schedule.
I think what you’re describing is more the feeling of uncertainty that derives from those things. “Disorganization” can certainly cause uncertainty, but it doesn’t have to. You can be reasonably certain of the outcome of something without having a very detailed plan to achieve it.
I don’t think that detrimental things like short-term thinking and ballooning debt is necessarily the product of disorganization. I don’t think that the US government lacks the organization to get that under control, for example. I think that the measures needed to contain these things are unpopular because they mean tightening the belt in a lot of places, and politicians would prefer that the next guy has to deal with that.