Children have the ability to simplify things in just one stroke. Probably because their mind is less cluttered and they have more actionable energy than any of us adults who have multiple things in our minds filling up garbage bags of chaos and clutter.

A quick glance on notes from my previous article:

Disorder is best explained by Science. It is called entropy. Entropy in simple terms is the measure of disorder. More the disorder in a system, more the entropy.

“The second law of thermodynamics states that “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase.”

I don’t like the word entropy. I don’t like the sound of it, especially the fact that it has a negative meaning attached to it. The mark of a disorder. If you say chaos or disorder, it rings the bell of chaos but when you say entropy, even if it is ages old, you do not grasp it immediately. Imagine screaming in a boardroom meeting, the reason for failure of a project is entropy. Who would relate to it? Very few or may be none. Now you know why I do not like the way this word is in our lives.

Entropy is the elephant in the room, the problem that exists but is not acknowledged or is ignored. We learnt in the previous article that the three principles regarding entropy to remember are

i) Entropy is the default state

ii)It tends to increase when the system is closed and

iii) Higher the entropy in a system, more the energy needed to be efficient. Imagine more Lego chaos and more time to clean up.

In today’s Habits for Thinking, I am bringing your attention to Lego and lessons it showcases to keep entropy in check.

Lego is a brand name for small building blocks that come in various shapes and sizes. For toddlers, it makes larger blocks and for older children and adults it gets into smaller, specific details including mindstorms that are programmable robotics constructions.  Possibilities are unlimited and so are the types of lego bricks that a child can possess. Even a small collection of a few lego models is big enough to bring a room in disorder, just like entropy.

Our lives are like that. Small pieces of building blocks that come together and make a nice picture. Relationships, work, purpose etc are the building blocks for the mind while food, sleep, exercise are the building blocks for the body. Like Lego blocks, they manage to sit together to create a unified model. You remove one or two pieces and there is a disorder in the system. You scatter them all, like a room full of building blocks, and wish you could scream entropy, entropy. There is only one difference, when Lego blocks are scattered and create a mess, they can be brought together and fixed to another model. In life, when the entropy or the disorder increases, there may not be any turning back.

Secondly, the more the number of Lego blocks, the more disorder it can create and it will require more energy to put it together. It happens in large organisations, to keep the organization’s efficiency, there are several processes designed. Just tackling the processes can increase a delay in decision making thus leading to disorder. Large organisations also tend to cater more to internal processes by which they move towards a closed system. And, like in any closed system the entropy increases slowing the organisation down.

But, Lego bricks and building blocks have magical power. These bring an excitement in the environment. Bright and colorful they fuel imagination and dreams. There are lessons to learn from these building blocks. In today’s Habits for Thinking, we are picking up some lessons that will help us keep entropy in check.

1. It starts with a goal:

Have you ever played with a box of lego building blocks? While you can use lego bricks independently, they are sold as a collection of blocks to make a car, a tower, a city etc. So when the child starts making it, he or she already has a goal in the mind. If we take this approach towards handling entropy, it will help in keeping it contained. Like, if you want a stable relationship with your partner, then you need to be conscious for it to be successful. If two partners are very stable but barely communicate, they are passive in their state of being in the relationship. This passive state can cause disorder too. So you know, to keep a happy, active relationship you need to communicate and give attention to the relationship. It is easier to associate a goal or success factor in relationships but difficult to see it in a project.

#ideastoaction: Start with a vision of success and work accordingly. It will keep entropy in check.

2.Building blocks have multiple roles:

That is the beauty of Lego bricks. The blocks are designed in such a manner that you can use Lego bricks in many different ways and in many models. These are not unique to only one design. Our life’s building blocks are like that too. A colleague at work is going through a rough patch and you take him out for a meal and talk it out. You have merged your own building blocks of food, work, relationships. Lego teaches us that. To merge, to interuse, to be constructive before entropy goes beyond control.

It works with self-growth too. Researchers and psychologists have identified correlation between entropy and mental health. As entropy increases in the mind, so does the disorder in life. One way to tackle this is to build several mental models. A closed mind has increased level of entropy and therefore lesser ability to make decisions, a growth mindset or an open mind to ideas have a better decision making mindset. This is due to the fact that the growth mindset learns several mental models. These mental models, like Lego blocks, are interchangeable, used in multiple ways thus keeping an active mind.  Steve Jobs gave a famous term to this concept – ‘connect the dots.’ You learn a mental model at work and you apply in your personal life. That’s the magic, like Lego blocks. You can be a free learner or you can use frameworks from courses to learn. Like you can build a model on your own or you can build a colosseum that Lego provides.

#ideastoaction: Mental models work as building blocks. Practice a growth mindset, learn mental models and keep entropy in check.

3.Collaboration helps:

Lego is more fun if you do it with others, friends, siblings. Keeping entropy at lower, manageable levels is not a fun thing to do. As discussed earlier, it is the elephant in the room. It is easier to address the elephant if you have more people on your side. Large organisations create teams to address this need. Still, there are processes that bind all teams back into a large one- making a big room full of Lego blocks. That’s why startups are agile. They are the small rooms of fewer Lego blocks.

If there was a job like Chief Entropy Minimiser, his job description would be to paint the vision of success or goals before the onset of projects, lead teams to use interchangeable  mental models and collaborate with other entropy minimisers to keep an agile, constructive, venture. Collaborate, make others responsible too to keep the company agile.

#ideastoaction: Make others conscious of entropy and the impact. Work together to keep entropy in check.

The name ‘LEGO‘ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt,” meaning “play well”. Entropy is the default state of life. At work, at life. Just Lego it. Just PLAY WELL!