Productivity Isn’t Good? Blame It on Entropy and Inertia

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Your productivity and values increase or decrease based on how you deal with 2 physical laws. Even if you do not know about the laws, they still impact you. So, if your productivity is not good - blame it on Entropy and maybe Inertia also.

It is hard to imagine anything you do that ISN'T subject to those two laws. Your learning, your physical condition, your clothes, your pencil, your relationships - and the list goes on - are all impacted. Oh, did I mention your productivity?

Productivity Isn’t Good? Blame It on Entropy and Inertia

Entropy

Consider entropy. First, what is it?

A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system. The inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society

Entropy describes what is constantly happening in life. Things left to themselves without any care will tear down and rot away.

If you are sitting in a chair right now, entropy is at work on that chair. It is decaying, rotting away as you sit there. No energy is being applied to the chair, so it is decaying - slowly – but still decaying.

Unfortunately, the same is true of your good values and good thinking! If you do not regularly put energy into your good values – they are DECAYING! Every good thing you do will not last for long without additional energy being applied including your productivity!

You experience this every time you learn something new. Unless you think about or review that new learning, you will not remember it. And, think about your work. Just because your productivity was great today does not mean it will be good tomorrow!

The Need for Humility

And, inertia will either help or hurt you. What is that?

A body at rest will tend to stay at rest. A body in motion will tend to stay in motion unless an external force is applied

You experience this when living good or bad values. Inertia will be working for you with your good values when you aren't putting energy into them. They don't go away immediately (...a body in motion will tend to stay in motion...), but they slowly erode because of entropy.

And, inertia hurts you more when you have bad values, because it can be difficult to stop a bad habit.

Humility accepts this and recognizes the need for improvement and vulnerability. 

Obviously, if you want to start something new, inertia will tend to work against you there also. It is like a giant flywheel that Jim Collins speaks about in his book "Good to Great". It is very tough to get that huge flywheel moving, but once moving inertia helps keep it moving.

Your Choice

Self-governing people understand the constant energy it takes to maintain and increase their values, much less their daily productivity. They also know that excellence fades quickly!

These two laws impact you all of the time, even if you forget about them or never learn about them.

It is time to pay attention and work toward high performance and excellence or just "go with the flow." Unfortunately, the flow is most often taking you downward like being in a swirling vortex - the porcelain receptacle!

It's your choice - excellence? Or go with the flow?


Tags

2 physical laws you must know, bad thinking, entropy, get things done, inertia, why things fall apart


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