Feeling bad about the state of your desk?

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helenjc

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For those of you in a temporary moment of chaos, have a look at the state of Eric Mack's desk last week!!

http://www.ericmackonline.com

Post is titled Help! I can't find my inbox!

I was feeling so overhwhelmed by the state of my paperwork and finding it difficult to get started when I saw this post on Eric's blog. I wanted to thank Eric for posting (his comments link seems to be broken) because it reminded me that it's OK to get out of control. If we don't get out of control we aren't 'living and/or working'...... :-) It also somehow gave me the motivation to clear up my own mess....

I'm back in order.... but I think I'll powermark a link to this post for when I start beating myself up about how bad my situation is.

cheers
Helen

ps Hope you found it Eric - I found mine and I'm embarrassed to say that it had a crack in the perspex!!!
 
As Eric says, it literally is "Entropy" which creates this type of disorder. Any energy system in our universe tends to move toward a state of greater randomness and disorder over time.

No sense getting upset by it. Blame the entropy of the universe!

Stephen Hawking talked about how the entropy of the universe is responsible for your house falling apart all by itself over time. Your house never gets better all by itself!

Also, Bucky Fuller coined the term Syntropy, or antientropy, which means the applying of Energy and Intelligence (Life) to create greater order and complexity in a local energy system. (your desk!).

No sense getting upset about it.
That's literally the way the Universe works.
Just apply Energy and Intelligence to the entropic system, and you can reverse the entropy of the universe in a local area (energy system) of the universe for a while.
But it will never end.

Not in this Cosmos.

Coz

ENTROPY
the measure of randomness or disorder of a system; in chemical reactions and molecular processes, spontaneous progress is always made in a direction which will increase the total state of disorder; as an analogy, throwing a bundle of confetti in the air will result in many isolated pieces scattered all over the ground, not the single bundle from which the pieces originated.
www.biologylessons.sdsu.edu/classes/lab4/glossary.html
 
And now the bad news (or the good news - depends on how you look at it). Photograph of David Allen's office (which I wanted to see for a long time) is posted on his blog. If Eric made you feel okay get ready for some real sob session :-). Beware whoever peeks in their will be branded 'kinky voyeur'.

http://david.davidco.com

AA
 
Did see that after my post yes - interesting timing that the two pals do this..... perhaps it was a setup :-)

If we could post images to this board I'd suggest a photo comp with prizes for best and worst!!!

cheers

Helen
 
I would guess that DA applies his "antientropy" moment to moment in an ongoing basis, instead of letting things get out of control.
As he says, it only takes a minute or two to file, and process things, and not just throw them into a random stack.

I think it just takes some training to get ourselves to process things, and not just throw them down.

Its a new habit.

Coz
 
Minor technical note:

Due to the changing nature of blogs, it is important that when posting URLs to specific documents that you link to the "Permanent" blog entry page, and not the home page of the blog. Otherwise, in a day or two, when someone clicks on your link, it may not make any sense.

So, be sure to click on the "Permanent Link" (This is usually the subject of the blog entry or an icon that looks like a piece of paper) and then copy that URL from your toolbar. This way, as content on the a blog's home page changes, your readers will be able to find the specific document to which you are referring.

This thread mentions specific posts, one for myself and one for David. Here are the full links for those posts.

http://www.ericmackonline.com/emo/emonline.nsf/dx/help-i-cant-find-my-in-box

http://david.davidco.com/DavidCo/davidallen.nsf/dx/my-office

I hope this helps.

Eric

PS. There was no coordination between David and I on the topic of our posts. It just happened to work out that way. :-)
 
CosmoGTD said:
I would guess that DA applies his "antientropy" moment to moment in an ongoing basis, instead of letting things get out of control.

Ah But David has said before that his desk get's "out of control " from time to time.

I'm sure it doesn't happen often :wink:

I'm guessing he would make sure it was "presentable" before he posted a picture of it .

I think he was kidding about the kinky voyeur thing , I personally enjoy seeing the set-up , work space and systems of people that I"m trying to learn from . It doesn't mean I want to copy it exactly, but I might get a good tip just from seeing what they do .
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Eric Mack said:
Minor technical note:

Due to the changing nature of blogs, it is important that when posting URLs to specific documents that you link to the "Permanent" blog entry page, and not the home page of the blog. Otherwise, in a day or two, when someone clicks on your link, it may not make any sense.

So, be sure to click on the "Permanent Link" (This is usually the subject of the blog entry or an icon that looks like a piece of paper) and then copy that URL from your toolbar. This way, as content on the a blog's home page changes, your readers will be able to find the specific document to which you are referring.

This thread mentions specific posts, one for myself and one for David. Here are the full links for those posts.

http://www.ericmackonline.com/emo/emonline.nsf/dx/help-i-cant-find-my-in-box

http://david.davidco.com/DavidCo/davidallen.nsf/dx/my-office

I hope this helps.

Eric

PS. There was no coordination between David and I on the topic of our posts. It just happened to work out that way. :-)
Click to expand...

Thanks Eric - when I tried to paste the url yesterday for the exact blog entry the hyperlink would not work because the complete url was cut short for some reason. Today when I tried it, it works fine. One of life's little mysteries.

Do you mind if I ask how long it took from go to stop in your desk clean up? I am always amazed that if you've got the GTD system in place that it can indeed take a relatively short period of time before you are back in business. It always looks far WORSE than it is and this often leads to procrastination for me and perhaps others. Was it 2-3 hours or perhaps less?

Thanks for sharing....
 
New Scientist Magazine ran an article – last year I think – in which it was theorised (and explained in detail) that mankind’s sole function in the universe was to aid entropy.

“But” I hear you all cry; “surly a living human is one of the most complex things in the universe, especially the human brain. Surly entropy means that complex molecules and structures break down into less complex molecules and structures, thus releasing knots of energy to dissipate across the universe – doesn’t the existence of humans fly in the face of entropy?”

Excellent point everybody. But the article went on to give examples. One concerned cooking oil. As the oil is changing temperature, complex molecules form which accelerate the change in temperature. These complex molecules are short lived, and their only function is to expedite the process of entropy.

Is it not true that humans are using up the energy on the earth a lot faster than animals would? The burning of fossil fuels is a prime example, as are the by-products of many manufacturing processes. The article states that the only reason humans came into being was so that through their complexity (brains and physical dexterity) there would be an overall increase in the efficiency of the entropy process in the universe as a whole. The anti-entropy inherent in the existence of a human is far out-weighed by the amount of positive entropy they cause. Therefore the net rate of entropy in the universe is increased if there are humans in it.

So, the next time your desk is a mess, don’t worry: you’re simply fulfilling your cosmic destiny.

Dave
 
This is correct.
Because to create the local antientropy takes Energy, which is gathered from the external environment and dissipated as heat. (entropy)
So to have the Energy to empty your Inbox, takes consuming food, some of which might have been brought by trucks for hundreds of miles, etc.

So even though your desk looks great, you are increasing the rate at which the Universe will end up in heat-death.
So basically you are accelerating the end of the universe.

So those with messy desks are actually prolonging the lifetime of the universe.

Coz

Busydave said:
The anti-entropy inherent in the existence of a human is far out-weighed by the amount of positive entropy they cause. Therefore the net rate of entropy in the universe is increased if there are humans in it.
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