If there is one undeniable law of the universe it’s that entropy always increases. Entropy – or chaos – is the natural state of everything. Order and structure have to be forced in, created, managed.
When it comes to the end of time, the universe should be a smooth, flat surface, at the same temperature, with nothing connected, nothhing linked, and with no structure or order.
If you want to see chaos then tidy your kitchen. Put everything in the right place so it looks neat, tidy and brilliant. Now leave it for a few hours. First, one of your teenagers walks in, makes a cup of tea, moves the mugs, the kettle, the milk, probably spills a bit, walks out. Ten minutes later someone comes in and sits down, moves a cushion, doesn’t put it back. However long it takes, it gets more and more chaotic.
Or, build a sandcastle. Perfect, shaped, beautiful. After 30 minutes the wind has knocked a bit down. After an hour it’s crumbling, and before the waves come in and wash it away entirely, it’s unlikely to be anything like a sandcastle.
Chaos increases.
This is the natural state of business. Chaos.
So for any project, imagine you have three people, Pete, Dave, and Frank. You have a project meeting, get them all pointing in the same direction, and so they all know what they’re doing. Leave them for three months (or even sooner) and it seems that Dave has carried on with the project but is no longer going in the right direction. Frank has been taken off and is now working part time on something else entirely, and Pete, it turns out, has done nothing.
Any project needs to be managed.
But also you have to accept and embrace the chaos. Accept it, manage it, reduce it, but don’t let it stress you out. It’s unavoidable that you will go off on tangents so use these as tests. Don’t rail against it, try to use it.
Some of the greatest discoveries were by accident. Random thoughts, random inspiration, can create greatness.