My one year-old nephew was visiting last week. While his mom took a call, I played with him in our living room, and I noticed something that seems pretty common with boys.
They are destructive!
If I stacked the blocks, he knocked them down.
If I lined up the cars all in a row, he scattered them.
If I put the plush toys in the crate, he fished them out and threw them on the floor.
By the end of the day, my living room looked like a war zone.
The scientific term is entropy— a gradual decline into disorder.
Interestingly, entropy is also known as the amount of energy unavailable for doing useful work.
It’s not just little boys who gravitate to a state of entropy.
We do it, too.
The bills pile up, the countertop connects clutter, the closet needs purging, and yet entropy trumps energy more often than I want to admit.
I get in my own way of doing useful work.
When I was in college, I thought my life was really complicated.
All those papers!
Exams!
Sorority meetings!
Roommate drama!
Then I got married, and learning how to do life with my soul mate made life even more complicated.
Then we had kids, and as you might have guessed—I discovered the real meaning of complicated. The family dynamic shifted each time we brought home a new baby. Our marriage, jobs, kids, and other obligations all fought for our attention, and like that stack of blocks in my living room, we didn’t always do a great job of keeping it all together.
As we get older, life doesn’t get easier. It just gets more complicated (and weirdly, also more expensive).
But also as I’ve gotten older I crave useful work. I need it.
But how do I make sure the energy for doing that work is available to me?
I’m a big fan of the THREE R’s—rituals, rhythms, and rest.
In fact, I’ve written about those three things here, here, here, and here.
But today I want to talk about something else….
And I know it seems counter-intuitive to add something to an already busy schedule in order to create more order in your life, but remember—we want to increase the energy available for doing useful work, and the the best way to do that is to do something that actually makes us feel energized.
Here’s How:
Get lost in a subject completely outside your scope of knowledge.
I’m reading a book called Buzz that’s all about bees, interesting to me because bees are responsible for nearly 1/3 of the foodstuffs we eat, and also for more than 350 of the 1,000 medical prescriptions cited in the 12th century Book of Medicines. I have no idea how I might apply what I’m learning about bees to future work, but a deep-dive into a subject in which I know so little is sure to spark creative output.
Schedule time to revitalize by doing something you’ve never done before.
Last week, I experienced a sound bath. Never heard of it? Let me explain—it was new to me, too! Essentially, a sound bath is a meditation class that guides you into a deep meditative state while surrounding you in ambient sound played by instructors who use instruments such as bowls, gongs, and cymbals. For a whole hour, I laid on my yoga mat in a warm room and just let the sound “wash” over me. It was glorious.
Meet with someone who inspires you, not because you need anything from them but because you love their company.
I used to be a part of a cohort of small business owners, but when I ended my business last year, I knew it was time to move on. For five years those women functioned as a lifeline for me, and I miss them! Today, I’m making a pact with myself to schedule a lunch with one or two of them. I love learning from people who are different from me in every way—stage of life, type of work, hobbies, or worldview.
Entropy will always play a role in our lives. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, creativity is often born from chaos.
Albert Einstein’s Desk on the day he died.