In 1982, an article was published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, which led to the so-called Broken Windows Theory.

Scientists found that what often made ​​the difference between a clean and beautiful building, and a devastated and abandoned one, was a simple broken window. When time passes and that window is not repaired, the building’s inhabitants are impregnated with a sense of abandonment, so they care less and less about the appearance of the building. Dirt and graffiti come up. And the more impaired the building is, the less willing to fix it the owners are.

This theory was used by municipalities and police departments of some cities to improve the appearance and crime rates in some neighborhoods. How? Fixing any decay as soon as it was discovered. Quite successfully, by the way.

I think the main reason why many people fail when trying to get organized is because of the idea behind this theory. The entropy is a physical property used in the laws of thermodynamics, and also refers to the degree of disorder of a system. And all organizational systems have a strong tendency to entropy.

It is relatively easy to get organized. Just spend a few hours writting down all the tasks that you have currently incomplete and put them into a set of lists that allow you to manage them in a simple way. The hard part is staying organized. Of course, you need to have a method, but still having it, your system always tend to get disordered and, if you are not able to cope with that, it will soon become useless and you will abandon.

Maintaining order is especially important in a personal organization system. For it to work, do not live with broken windows. Review your system regularly, keep it current and fix any imbalance as soon as you discover it.