Organized Chaos - Finding Peace (and My Keys) Through Intentional Habits

The Unseen Tax of Disorder

I starkly remember that day. I couldn't find my debit card. The anxiety was over the roof and there was tightness in my chest. Where did it go? It's not there with my wallet. To say it was nerve wrecking was an understatement. It couldn't have been at a worse time. I was about to move to a new city for my current job and I would lose my flight if I don't leave soon. It wasn't the first time something like this happened. In fact, this had been a frequent occurrence for a significant portion of my life.

There's a hidden tax we pay daily: the tax of disorder. It's not just about misplaced items, it's the mental energy drained by constant searching and frustration. Disorder isn't just visual clutter; it's cognitive friction. It slows us down, distracts us, and subtly erodes our focus. It kills our day and makes life a bit more miserable.

This isn't just about being 'lazy.' For some of us, the external chaos mirrors an internal cognitive style – a mind that races, leaps, and easily loses track of details. The challenge isn't to become someone we're not, but to find ways to work with our nature, not against it.

Over the years, I developed my own way of dealing with these situations, often without conscious awareness. While I haven't achieved some idealized state of calm, I have managed to eliminate some of the more persistent anxieties. Unintentionally, I implemented small changes to reduce daily friction and reclaim mental energy. To my surprise, it proved effective.

Recognizing this, it seems logical to now intentionally refine these subtle changes to create a more functional everyday environment.

Section 1: Understanding My Mental Landscape

One consistent observation over the years is that generalized advice on work methods or achievement is often unhelpful. At best, such advice is generic; at worst, it can be actively detrimental. This is understandable. They didn't have anyone to teach them how to help others whose mind works differently from how their own works. The result was mass confusion and then everyone agreeing on being negligent about nuances so they have claim "hard-core" is the only right approach.

The reality is everyone is unique and it's close to impossible to give 100% correct advice on anything. But, here's the thing, taking some effort to understand the person on the other side helps a ton. It's usually the first principles that people struggle with. Once they get it right, it becomes a whole lot easier for them to figure out the rest themselves. At least they would know what the right questions are and where to look for answers.

I had the same question most you asked yourselves over and over again. "Why am I struggling with X?". No one really managed to help me with it. By sheer dumb luck I stumbled upon a situation where I had a chance to sit down and figure out how my brain works. And it's fascinating!

I realized that my mind was going a million miles per hour with ideas and thoughts. Often time I struggled to keep myself from sidetracking because of those thoughts and ideas. My mind is naturally active and associative. Ideas and thoughts arise rapidly, often connecting in unexpected ways. This is a source of creativity and insight, but also a potential source of distraction and disorganization in daily life.

In a typical workday, I might begin researching a specific topic and, within minutes, find myself exploring a completely tangential but related area. While this exploration can be valuable, it can also lead to a sense of being pulled in multiple directions, making it difficult to maintain focus on immediate tasks. This mental style, while advantageous in certain contexts, presents a clear challenge when it comes to everyday organization and task management. It makes impossible to get work done some days. Inevitably, this cognitive style has, at times, caused concerns with colleagues and managers. The issue wasn't my competence or knowledge, but rather the consistent adherence to deadlines for certain type of tasks.

Sometimes deadlines are easily met. Other times… less so. To illustrate the point, consider this: I have a parcel on my desk, within arm's reach, containing a Christmas gift a friend sent me around December 25th last year. It has remained unopened for over two months. And it's not because I don't want to open it. I didn't have single day with the mindspace to sit down, open it and enjoy that present. If you're wondering why someone wouldn't simply open a gift immediately, then you are precisely the audience for whom these insights are most relevant. It is my hope that this article provides valuable understanding.

The key isn't to suppress this mental energy, but to channel it effectively and create external structures that support, rather than hinder, my natural cognitive processes.

Section 2: The Deliberate Pocket: Physical Space as Mental Anchor

My personal phone will always be in my left pocket, my work-issued phone in another. Keys are consistently clipped to the belt loop on the right side. Badge on my belt loop on the left side. A small pocket in my jeans always contains emergency cash, a contingency for situations where digital payment methods are unavailable or my phone is inaccessible. This isn't about aesthetics; it's about creating reliable anchors in my physical space, reducing the cognitive load of remembering 'where did I put that?'. This establishes a simple and reliable search pattern, accessible by touch alone.

One practical adjustment I've made is establishing designated places for essential items. This may seem rudimentary, but the impact on daily efficiency is significant. The result is a noticeable decrease in wasted time and mental energy spent searching for essential items. It’s a small intervention, but it frees up mental space for more meaningful tasks. It is a pragmatic approach to reclaiming small increments of time and focus throughout the day.

Section 3: Accepting Impermanence: Ground Zero and Re-acquisition

Loss is an inevitable part of life, whether we accept it or not. However, losing essential items at critical moments... well that is particularly problematic. This is where adopting a mindset focused on 'acceptable loss' becomes valuable, recognizing that some possessions are ultimately replaceable.

Another shift in perspective has been to acknowledge the reality of impermanence and the concept of 'acceptable loss.' Not everything is irreplaceable, and not every loss is catastrophic.

Essential documents and irreplaceable items require meticulous safeguarding. Everyday items like chargers or common household objects, while inconvenient to lose, are ultimately replaceable. Chargers and headphones are easily replaced. Passports, in contrast, represent a loss that is significantly more burdensome and complex to resolve. Recognizing this hierarchy has been liberating.

This acceptance of potential minor losses reduces the mental burden of constant vigilance over every single possession. It's a pragmatic approach to managing risk and focusing mental energy on what truly matters. It’s about accepting the occasional inconvenience as part of life, rather than a personal failing.

Section 4: Mental Bandwidth: The Unopened Gift and Prioritization

Having time doesn't mean having energy.

Consider the unopened Christmas gift from months ago. It's not a lack of time that prevents me from opening it. It's a lack of mental energy. Time is a linear measure, but our capacity for focus and engagement fluctuates.

Traditionally, we often equate effort with the time required for each component of a task. But the reality is we operate on units of mental energy. Tasks, even seemingly simple ones, require cognitive resources. When mental energy is depleted, whether from demanding work, stress, or even prolonged unstructured thought, even minor tasks can feel insurmountable. A failure to acknowledge this limitation frequently results in burnout.

Although I won't dictate how to work, I can guide you towards understanding that intentional habits, like designated places for items, and mindful task management aren't just about tidiness and productivity. They are about conserving precious mental energy. By reducing daily friction and cognitive load, we free up bandwidth for activities that require deeper focus and engagement, like finally opening that long-awaited gift.

We have a very limited mental energy each day. Even on a given day, we have limited amount of energy we can use at a given time. One can't jump from working on something mentally intensive to another "productive" activity in a split second or a minute. Sometimes we end up doing nothing just to recover from the activity that required intense focus. It's also important to recognize that our energy levels are not isolated to a single day; the energy available on any given day is influenced by the expenditure of energy on previous days. To disregard this interconnectedness is to risk inaccurate self-assessment. Acknowledging our limitations and the fluctuating nature of our energy is not a weakness, but a demonstration of realistic self-awareness.

Section 5: Tools for Thought: Mind Mapping and Browser Management as External Structures

One of the more recent realizations was how I would prefer my notes. I've tried everything over the years. My explorations in note-taking have spanned from traditional pen and paper to digital solutions like Obsidian, Google Docs, and various other applications. However, none of these methods consistently felt like a natural fit. The lack of progress across these different methods became increasingly frustrating as I sought to understand the underlying issue. Well, that was the case until I asked myself what was making me feel using those didn't meet my requirements. Structure of the notes turned out to be the reason. I realized some notes needs to be structured in a different way that doesn't align with traditional note taking. For managing the flow of thoughts and ideas, linear note-taking often falls short. Tools like Xmind, which allow for mind mapping, offer a different approach. They provide a visual, non-linear structure that better reflects the associative nature of thought. The only question now is whether it would stick and if not, why? Currently, I find some measure of satisfaction in this approach, as writing down thoughts and ideas demonstrably alleviates cognitive overload.

Another area requiring attention is my web browser. Similar to my note-taking habits, I, like many others, often use my browser as a repository for unread content. Valuable articles, such as The 180-Year-Old EndNotes That Foretold the Future of Computation and How to Communicate when Trust is Low (Without Digging Yourself into a Deeper Hole), remain open in browser tabs, alongside million others.

None-the-less, remember that writing down thoughts and ideas, regardless of the format, serves as a crucial externalization process. It removes the burden of holding everything in working memory, freeing up mental space and allowing for clearer thinking and prioritization.

Section 6: Leveraging Assistance: LLM as Cognitive Augmentation (For Sustained Functionality)

I've rewrote this section several times because of peoples opinion on LLMs and privacy guarantees of Big AI companies. LLMs and the companies who own them have their set of shortcomings. I agree with that sentiment. But not using it because of that reason might not be most wise move. Regardless of one's personal feelings, Large Language Models like Gemini are demonstrably impactful in certain fields. At least for me, I found their existence life changing while I was recovering from my burnout.

Google did something magical with Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model. It helped me with organizing thoughts, reasoning, finding new knowledge and seeking help with often new topics. The reasoning that's generated for prompts for this specific model has intrigued me. It was able to infer intent based on my prompts. In contrast, I found ChatGPT less effective. Frequently, its reasoning processes and responses lacked coherence and missed crucial elements, seemingly due to a failure to infer beyond the literal prompt.

The thinking models are very helpful when we need a psuedo-objective view on things or want to think through a topic when we are down with low mental energy reserves. Reading through the reasoning steps generated by Gemini 2.0 often helped me solve complex challenges, not just in tech, but also in other areas like financial planning and future planning. They act as readily available cognitive assistants, capable of handling tasks that would otherwise consume significant mental energy.

Conclusion: Order as a Tool, Not a Destination: Functionality in the Everyday

The pursuit of 'organized chaos' isn't about achieving a state of perfect order, which may be both unrealistic and perhaps undesirable.

It's about implementing intentional strategies to enhance daily functionality. It's about creating a workable system, not an immaculate ideal.

Order, in this context, is not a destination but a tool, a means to reduce friction, conserve mental energy, and enhance our capacity to engage with the world more effectively. The process is ongoing, imperfect, and requires continuous adaptation. But the incremental gains in functionality are tangible and worthwhile.

Ultimately, the aim is not to eliminate chaos entirely – perhaps that's an inherent part of life and thought – but to strategically organize the elements we can control to navigate that chaos more effectively and function with greater intention in our everyday lives.