Two copywriters walk into a bar...

Copywriters are making hilarious jokes in a comment section of this post in the John Carlton's blog. Although, in order to laugh at it you need to know the meaning of words "copywriter", "swipe" and "Twitter".

Dealing With Chaos (modified on 03/17/09)

One of my close friends insists that I increase the level of entropy in the Universe. I think he is tragically mistaken.

Certainly, there are some people who thrive in chaos. Chaos helps them be creative. Or they feel comforted by it. I am not one of them.

Then, there are people who are comforted by order and thrive in it. They love routines, schedules and predictability. I am not one of them either.

I hate both -- order and chaos. Perhaps, "hate" is too strong of a word. But I dislike them immensely: order for it's binding, suffocating nature, and chaos for it's lack of harmony. And if you take out of the picture these two, what's left is the middle ground -- easy, flexible, logical systems. It's a way of having some order in one's life without it smothering you into a robot-like state and, at the same time, chasing a chaos away.

To think about it, most of what surrounds us in life are systems. Our political, social, religious, professional, and even family and love life are all systems -- whether we want it or not. We use systems others created for us or create our own systems all the time, even if we have no intentions of doing so. The way we choose our clothes, brush our teeth, relate to other people, clean our house, solve problems are all systematic in nature -- that is, we repetitively do it in the same manner.

Even when we are being creative and unique -- writing a novel, for example, or painting a picture, we still follow certain system. The way we approach our subject, the way we arrange supplies in preparation for the artistic inspiration, the way we choose words or brushes, the way we see the world are systematic as well.

So, it's really not a question of whether we do it or not. It's simply a question of whether the systems we create and use in our life are good or bad.

The system is bad when:

• It doesn't feel right.
• It creates negative effect in our life.
• The efforts to sustain it is greater than the results it produces.
• It's not logical and and is hard to follow.
• It's rigid.

The system is good when:

• It feels right.
• It produces noticeably positive results.
• It convenient, easy to follow, and requires little effort to maintain.
• It's flexible and adaptable to changes.
• It's logical and after an initial learning curve (if it even exist), requires little or no extra effort to memorize/recall it.
• The result/effect it produces is much greater than the efforts required to sustain it.
  

For instance, a language is a great system. After we learn how to use it, we just use it all our life -- some more than others. Another excellent system is Internet. It's very easy to use and the results we get out of using are next to miraculous.

Example of a bad system? The way spelling taught in schools. Consider the amount of time an effort involved into teaching it and the poor results it produces. Another example? The way spouses relate to one another in a troubled marriage. Now, that's where the real entropy is...

As for business, everything above still applies. And, as a rule, if a business system is created in order to stroke someone's ego, it's a bad one.

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Art: Plotkin Entropy by donnabellas