Chaos Has It's Place

 [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to Business is Unusual. Let's talk about how chaos has its place. So I love to organize things. I have spreadsheets, trackers, documentation. It's-- In my very first job, I was writing SOPs before I knew what SOP was. I recently have spent way too much time working on a task list in Google Sheets that, that uses arrays and if you're tuning out already, I'm so sorry, but I do love spreadsheets, and I could talk about them a lot.

In a lot of ways, my, my business and the work that I do and the way that I live is an argument against chaos. Obviously, energy is a resource. Exhaustion is a design problem. And

I love managing events. I used to run Pridefest, recently did a bit of a big event for one of my clients. I ran my my daughter's wedding I love it. And the reality is that [00:01:00] in an event, there's chaos.

There's what you plan. And then there's people and life. In a lot of ways, event production requires that you be organized and then also comfortable with chaos. Because there's a point at which you just have to let go and see what's gonna happen.

I, I work with a lot of highly creative people. They arrive mid-thought. They're six ideas deep. They... they need someone like me who doesn't flinch at the pile, who doesn't judge it, who actually finds joy in discerning how to create a system of organization that protects their creativity, which means protects some space for chaos.

When I was heavy into meditation, I had a meditation instructor, and I was doing a solitary retreat, and my instructor said, "Okay, we're gonna plan your days. You're gonna, you know, get up at six, and you're gonna meditate, and you're gonna go for a walk, and you're gonna make breakfast," and we're writing out, like, what I'm doing every hour for [00:02:00] twelve hours.

Mostly meditation, but like... And then he said to me, he said, "Well, you have to have a really strict schedule, because if you don't have a schedule, you don't have anything you can deviate from, and the deviations are where you find inspiration and awareness." And I thought, "Huh, that's really interesting, isn't it?"

So, uh, so to all that to say, um, chaos has its place

It, and in a lot of ways to me that statement The way it disrupts itself kind of is the point. 'Cause you can't really contain chaos. It doesn't stay in its place. It creates its place. And without chaos, without the deviations, the discoveries aren't available to us. And the chaos and the deviations are only possible when we have created some patterns and [00:03:00] expectations.

It's why genres work in movies. The, the movies that disrupt a genre, tell the story in a different way often really hit, but they hit because you have a series of expectations that have been built up over the genre.

I think that part of why the organizing, like, the organizing work that I do and did in, you know, social justice and in nonprofit spaces and, and with different groups and companies now is because I am so comfortable with chaos. I, I don't try to end it or control it or solve it, right? What I do is I work to build systems that allow it to breathe and also allow you as the person to breathe. I'm not afraid of chaos. I'm also not, um, I'm not interested in letting it run my life, like. And [00:04:00] I think the other piece of it is that when you have the predictable chaoses managed, the other ones don't feel as threatening.

So like, if, if, if you know that you're gonna run out of ink and you've got a big event for your printer, right? And you don't prevent that, so then at the last minute you have to get ink, and then you print the things, and then you're late, and you get stuck in traffic, and you can't get your, um, you can't do the sound check or whatever.

That's a chaos that feels sort of predictable and preventable and isn't so much fun. But let's say you do all that and you get there and somebody shows up and they offer to perform, and they're a really amazing performer, and you're like, "Let me see what I can make work," because that's a, that's a powerful offer.

If I can accept it, I want to. But because [00:05:00] you deal with the printer ink, you get to enjoy the chaos that's kind of fun. I think chaos is gonna show up no matter what. But I think if you work to manage and mitigate the predictable things, then you end up dealing mostly with either the life ones, I won't pretend those are fun, they can, they can be intense, right?

And the fun ones, the, the offers, the opportunities that, that you didn't expect, and you can, you can ride that wave a little bit

And think of it, you know, if you're, if you're swimming in the ocean and you know where the shore is, you know, aligned to it, you can take different kinds of risks. You know how far you can swim, hopefully, or, or what, what, what level of burden you're putting on yourself.

And I feel like that's a little bit what organizing and planning to-- planning things out does for how you can or work with chaos in your life and, and the, and the gifts that it gives you

I, in thinking about this, I've, I really thought [00:06:00] in some ways the chaos that I didn't agree to and that was unpre- there are things like birth, right? Like, that just, it happens, and it's gonna throw things into chaos. You didn't agree to it per se, but you did. You're alive.

You have to deal with it. Or someone gets sick. The one that I still struggle with is the one that I don't feel like I agreed to, right? Like, i- if I'm running an event and something happens, that's just how events go.

Like even when, you know, one year I did a huge event, made everything perfect, and then it's Colorado, so of course snowed in the middle of, uh, June or something. I was like, "Seriously?" It changed everything. But that's just, you know, I live in Colorado, and that's events. When my week goes sideways, when my week goes sideways because something broke that shouldn't have or, um, I can't find something, that's a big one,

I resent that and I fight it. And

I'm not gonna say that [00:07:00] I think you should.

And so I think for me, my, my approach to organizing is about eliminating not chaos. It's not so much about eliminating chaos. My organizing and the work that I do isn't really so much about eliminating chaos. Uh, because obviously I don't think it's possible. Giving yourself more choice over which chaos is likely to show up.

Think about this for yourself, for your business, for how you manage the unexpected. Where you find yourself able to go along and ride the wave, and where maybe you feel like you need to stop things or resist them or control them.

And consider what chaos would you welcome if you'd been the one to choose it? If you wanna see where your energy's actually going, chosen chaos and otherwise, check out the Energy Snapshot at bicurean.com/energysnapshot. And thanks for tuning in.

[00:08:00] Remember in this ever evolving world of modern business. It's not about fitting in, it's about standing out.

Stay curious, stay innovative, and always keep it unusual.