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Whether you're managing a Fortune 500 company, a small business, a household, or a lemonade stand, you will encounter chaos. If you wish to improve your life and meet your goals, you must learn to deal with the unexpected events that are inevitably woven into the fabric of life. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that energy tends to flow from being concentrated in one place to being less concentrated in another place. Just as energy inevitably tends to spread, so, too, do little mistakes tend to happen and to spread. Left unattended, little mistakes can have big consequences. For example, a relatively small piece of insulation probably caused the loss of the space shuttle Columbia (the insulation fell off, hitting the shuttle's wing, causing a small rupture, allowing heat to build up during reentry, allowing heat to enter the shuttle, causing wing spars to melt, eventually causing total system failure). On a smaller scale, such chaotic events occur countless times in your own world every day.

Chaotic events cannot be eliminated, but they can be managed. Here are a few common sense principles to consider:

1. Chaos creeps into every life and every business: it's simply the price of occupying space here on earth.
2. In your own world, chaos can't be stopped, but it can be managed. And if you're interested in achieving your goals, chaos is a fact-of-life that should be anticipated and addressed.
3. Managing chaos requires vigilance, flexibility, and work.
4. Vigilance means keeping your eyes open in order to find little mistakes before they become big mistakes.
5. Flexibility is required to accept the unwanted changes that are the inevitable price we must pay for living in an ever-changing world.
6. Work is require to keep things organized, to keep things moving, and to repair things that break.
7. Not all chaos is bad: life's little surprises can come in the for of lucky breaks (but it's important to remember that luck most often visits those who have prepared for it).
8. And finally, remember that some environments are simply more chaotic than others. If your environment is chronically chaotic (and highly resistant to change), perhaps it's time to consider moving on.

About Chaos

"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
Henry Miller

"Chaos Theory says that the most successful people are the people who are good at plan B."
James Yorke

"Nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
Thomas Jefferson

"The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way."
George Leonard

"The quest for uncertainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel a man to unfold his powers."
Erich Fromm

"Presence of mind is nothing but an increased capacity of dealing with the unexpected."
Carl von Clausewitz

Change

"Nothing endures but change."
Hereclitus

"The world hates change, yet change is the only thing that has brought progress."
Charles Kettering

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."
Samuel Johnson

"The essence of life is change, a panoply of growth and decay. Elect life and growth, and you elect change and the prospect of death."
M. Scott Peck

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are moveable, and those that move."
Ben Franklin

Planning, Organization, and Work

"He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out the plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. If the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign."
Victor Hugo

"A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time."
Annie Dillard

"As you organize your life, you must localize and define it. You cannot do everything."
Phillips Brooks

"The older I get, the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first—a process which often reduces the most complex human problems to manageable proportions."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor."
Christian Bovée

"If objectives are only good intentions, they are worthless. They must degenerate into work. And work is always specific, always has—or should have clear, unambiguous, measurable results, a deadline, and a specific assignment of accountability."
Peter Drucker

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