.png)
Systems help you win at life.
By default, entropy will take its course. Coffee gets cold, metal rusts, colors fade, and weeds take over the flowers. And this applies to your own life just as much as it’s a law of thermodynamics.
There’s an endless supply of chaos, so the question becomes: Can you bring about order from it?
There are different levels of entropy that vary in their complexity.
A low entropy level would be your home life. A high entropy level would be the world at large. Good luck with saving the world - it’s a losing game without saving your own little world. Home life isn’t nearly as complex, it’s mostly cause & effect.
It might be fun and games to spend time immersed in the culture, doomscrolling the news, acting like you’re a informed citizen. But you also have to figure out who’s taking out the trash.
Who’s going to make the bed?
Who’s paying the bills?
Who’s planning the grocery run?
Who’s getting the kids to sleep?
That stuff you deal with every single day of the year.
You improve that and you’ve just improved an enormous part of your existence.
Each of you has your own wants, needs, and responsibilities.
It behooves you to communicate and get clear across the board on understanding each other. You might think you already do, but there’s always more to clarify.
What’s their love language? Are we aimed at the same thing? Are we both incentivized to see it through? How do we complain and criticize? Is it constructive or destructive? How do we build each other up at every opportunity? How do we pass on lessons to our children? How do we help them avoid our mistakes and replicate our wins? How do we get to be ourselves while living with others while also being someone that’s a joy to live with?
The less guesswork, the better.
The less mind reading, the better.
The less questioning of what to do, the better.
Determine the group aim. Ask, “So what is it we’re trying to do here?” Orient yourselves from there. By default, it’s going to be what Oliver Anthony so bluntly described as “Pay bills & die.”
There’s got to be a bigger plot driving you.
Determine how you think you’ll get there.
Determine which roles are needed.
Determine who will fulfill those roles. (Think practically: I will take out trash, you handle vacuuming.)
Determine what those roles entail, specifically. (Where those chores begin & end, what’s included in each responsibility)
It’ll seem beneath you to hash these things out, and it is. But that’s the point. This is your foundation.
This is your day to day existence and you might as well straighten it out brick by brick.
It’s not robotic routines and restrictive living.
Far from it.
See it as craftsmanship applied to daily life.
Treat those tiny things you repeatedly do as a craft you’re seeking to master.
It will never by perfect but it gives you something to care about, get better at, and take pride in.
I think it was Martin Luther who said:
“The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays—not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors.”
Your home life can be smooth and flow.
You can reach a point where you don’t mind the tasks. There’s nothing to mind.
There isn’t a need for a mind to be applied, it just happens effortlessly.
You can polish out the natural entropic friction that enters.
