We all know what it’s like to let one smaller task go undone and watch It get joined by other tasks until it becomes bigger and bigger. The first thing that comes to mind is doing dishes. One dish leads to another until the sink is full and they are all soaking in a grimy pool, dirtier than when they were put in the sink. This is not a new phenomenon and we see the concept of attending to tasks or challenges quickly or the importance of not forgetting the heft of seemingly small things, referred to in timeless colloquialisms such as “a stitch in time saves nine” and “it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Yet, no matter how early it was discovered that attending to things in a timely manner is best for productivity and health, finding the motivation to wash that one dish, right then and there, can be easy to brush off or seemingly harder than it should be. Sometimes it can feel like nothing changes no matter how many different strategies are employed or that things go right back to the way they were after a few weeks. However, researcher Allison Car-Chellman has been applying physics to organization and the study of social systems, resulting in new ways to look at address the same struggles utilizing the dynamics of entropy and negentropy – negative entropy.
For our purposes entropy is defined as the natural force leading systems towards disorganization. Without energy being channeled into a system, the system will inevitably collapse. For example, if someone does not eat their bodily systems will begin to become “disorganized,” in the sense that the organs are moving towards shutting down, because they energy in the form of calories is not being put into the system. If they eat and do not throw away the trash created from dinner, the organization of the home will begin to become disorganized.
This is where negentropy comes into play. Negative entropy is considered the forces leading systems towards organization and can be used to measure how much energy it will take to reach an organized state.
A house that tidies once a week, but only tidies enough to maintain minimal organization will, according to the laws of physics, be more disordered than a house that tidies twice a week. Seems like not much of a difference. But that’s where we falter and often get caught up on good enough. What the once a week household isn’t thinking about is that the spatula that was misplaced and now requires 5 minutes searching for is not something the twice a week house is spending 5 minutes looking for. The first house has now experienced a loss of energy.
It can also help to think about the loss of energy as barely noticeable leak in a tire. One that is almost unperceivable and will take days to flatten the tire. When this leak is overlooked and not repaired, only re-inflated when it is getting close to flatness it might not seem like a significant loss of energy, but nonetheless it is a source of constant drainage. In our lives this leaking effect comes in the form of mental and physical energy. With enough unperceivable holes one might find themselves wondering why they are exhausted at the end of an uneventful week.
Loss of energy in any system is natural, but it can be minimized. And the key here is that by minimizing lost energy within systems, more energy is available to be spent on more important tasks or to simply have and feel better about. Efficiency is key within systems of any kind and, as we are seeing now, particularly key within the systems that impact our mental health. Negentropic thinking involves analyzing one’s life and looking for areas where energy is being lost.
A lawn that is mowed once a week will take considerable less time than one that is mowed once a month. A car that is not maintained will fall apart quicker. A person’s well-being whether mental or physical that is not analyzed for efficiency will become worse or take more to correct.
When someone is depressed or anxious and feels exhausted all day long and can’t muster the energy to clean their home, that home is leaking energy and the more disorder it accumulates the more energy it will take to become rebalanced. Beginning to work from a negentropic view point may take some getting used to, but in the long run its reward should start compounding. When less energy is wasted on smaller things, more can be spent on enjoyable ones.
And sometimes that simply means being able to relax without thinking about the dishes in the sink.
-Gabriel Severino, MA