Entropy and Her Children

The battle against disorder

Photo by James Qualtrough 🇮🇲 on Unsplash

Two weeks ago, my office was clean and organized. This morning, it is a mess of uncollapsed Amazon boxes, unshelved books, and a piled-up desk. My half of the bathroom counter is a disorganized mess, despite my attempts to tidy it last week.  My woodworking space in the garage has merged with the rest of the garage to the point that I cannot work there.

There’s a physical law explaining all this. It’s called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it states that the entropy in a system will increase over time. (Or as Mr. Wolf, my high school physics teacher, so memorably put it, “heat flows downhill.” The Second Law of Thermodynamics is why my coffee gets cold as I write this.

Entropy is such a useful word. In physics, it is defined as “a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.” The second definition is more general: “a gradual decline into disorder.”

That is a perfect description of my office, my bathroom counter, my woodworking space. A gradual decline.

My neighbor has an immaculate garage. It’s sickening, with its tidy shelves and floor space and room to park cars - cars! - in his garage. I tell myself it’s because he’s retired and therefore has time to keep an immaculate garage or that somehow entropy doesn’t reach next door, but I know the truth.

He does the little things every day to keep entropy at bay. I don’t. Therefore, he has a tidy garage, and I have a two-car Black Hole of Calcutta attached to my house.

What’s worse is the effort it will take to bring order to my spaces is significantly higher now that entropy has done its work. Cleaning my office will take a couple hours; my bathroom counter, a half-hour at least.  The garage? Several weekends.  And the longer I put it off, the worse it will get. Entropy increases over time.

This is true of my to-do list at work, my health and fitness, and my spiritual life. Being behind at work, out of shape, and drifting spiritually are all children of entropy.

This is how you end up with a stalled career, lots of weight to lose, strained relationships, and a dry spiritual life.

I recently started getting up at 5 AM and going on a walk for exercise. This morning, I slept in. One day lost in the fight against old age and decrepitude. Entropy gets another foothold in my life.

Entropy has opportunity costs as well. Because my woodworking space is full of stuff, I can’t start on the project I want to build until I restore some order to that space. I can’t practice guitar until I find my pick, which is somewhere under the pile of boxes in the corner of my office. And every day I don’t practice is a day I’m not learning guitar. Another day further from my goal.

Unfortunately, there’s no switch I can flip that will turn me into a neat, orderly person. (If there were, I’m sure my wife would have flipped it years ago!) It’s hundreds of little decisions that cause entropy - a tool not put away, a box not collapsed and taken to the recycling bin, a book left unshelved.

The fight against entropy comes down to making those decisions differently. Put the book back on the shelf. Collapse the boxes. Pick up the guitar and practice. Spend 30 minutes every evening cleaning and organizing the garage, the shed, the bathroom counter.  Get out of bed and go for a walk. Read my Bible. Take my wife out on a date. Do the little things that keep entropy at bay.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some boxes to collapse.