The Optimal Amount of Chaos

For a while I’ve been tracking 12 daily habits with an app. The impact on my life has been significant. So positive, in fact, that you know what my greatest temptation has been? Wanting to track 12 more habits. 

I love the sense of order in my day and the satisfaction of marking each habit as complete. And I want more of those feelings.

Now thankfully, I chose an app that sets a hard limit on tracking 12 items. The creators of the app were smart. They knew about people like me. People who take a good thing and push it too far. And when this happens, people like me stop using their app. 

Here’s a pattern:

First, chaos —> Then, a highly motivated return to order —> Then, an over-correction towards extreme order —> Which leads to exhaustion & frustration —> Then, throwing the baby out with the bath water —> Finally, a return to chaos

Now, two examples:

Cleaning

The countertops in the kitchen are covered with stuff. Toys are spread across the floors from sea to shining sea. And for two days we’ve been picking our clothes from the clean laundry basket instead of our drawers.

After admitting that our home has become chaotic, my wife and I sit down in the evening to devise a plan. Not so much how to clean the house, but how to keep it from ever getting this way again. 

We talk. We strategize. I push for a more extreme plan. We decide that we’re putting an end to this clutter and mess once and for all. And we mean it. We truly believe in our hearts that we’re going to devise a plan so watertight, a process so comprehensive, that no clutter will ever break through.

And for a couple of weeks it works. Pushed forward by an initial burst of motivation and the excitement of seeing real progress, we’ll transform the house to a level of clean that it hasn’t seen since… well, last time we did this.

Then, reality hits. A busy day causes a pile of dishes to remain in the sink. A sick child throws off all bets. Or we’re simply exhausted from our all out effort and constant vigilance against clutter. Each time looks different but the result is the same: our perfect plan was too rigid to handle real life. We get frustrated, we get discouraged, we give up. The pendulum swings back to chaos.

Another example:

Parenting

One day it dawns on us that a particular behavior in one of our children has slipped too far. Maybe we’re repeating every request 2 or 3 times, or maybe they’re arguing with everything we ask them to do. 

One of us parents, usually me, declares that things are going to start changing around here. My instinct is to pull in the reigns as tight as possible. So over the next few days, I’m on my children for everything. Every infraction gets a consequence. Every stray behavior is corrected and admonished. The goal: military-grade discipline within the week.

But soon our house feels like a boot camp instead of a home. We’ve swung the pendulum too far towards order and forgotten that our kids are still kids. We’ll need to work with them on these behaviors over the course of months and years, and not fool ourselves into thinking we’ll set things straight in a week.

After a while, I get tired of hearing myself dish out orders and consequences. It’s exhausting and I feel distant from my children because the majority of our interactions are correction-based. This ratio is not ideal for flourishing children. And despite our efforts, the kids behavior has not changed anywhere near as fast as we had hoped. The whole effort feels like a failure and so we quietly throw in the towel and the pendulum swings back towards chaos.

4 Simple Rules

Why do we swing like a pendulum between control and chaos? At first it feels easier to operate at the extremes. The rules and decisions are simpler. There is clarity and relief that comes from a sharp change in course. But through many cycles, I can report that this is not a sustainable course.

But what is the solution?

I’ve found that the key in many areas of life is to adopt a few very simple rules and then to allow as much flexibility as possible.

When it comes to keeping our house in order, my wife and I have settled on a few simple rules. 

1. Every night the dishes in the sink get washed and put away
2. We keep the living room floor clean by picking up anything on the floor and putting it in our “clutter bin” which gets emptied by the kids when it’s full
3. We wash, dry, fold, and put away one load of laundry every day (Monday – Thursday)
4. When the kids want a snack (usually 2x/day) we use that as leverage to get them to clean up the toys they were just playing with

There are lots of other areas in the house that get cleaned (some on a more regular schedule than others), but for the most part we tackle those jobs when we have time or motivation or simply when they bother us enough that something has to be done. The nice thing, though, is that our 4 simple rules ensure that we start each day with a clean kitchen counter, a clean living room floor and clean laundry. And the toy situation, while not perfect, is kept somewhat in check by our little snack bribes.

Summary

Find the sweet spot
between control and chaos.
Stay away from the extremes.
Start with just a few simple rules, 
probably fewer rules than you think.
Too much order is exhausting. Too much 
chaos is exhausting, too. The sweet spot is 
motivating and sustainable. Avoid the pendulum.