- Source : https://jamesclear.com/entropy - Auteur: [[James Clear]] - Notes liées : *** # Résumé Entropy is the natural tendency for things to become disordered over time. We must expend effort to create and maintain order in our lives. Murphy's Law and entropy are related concepts that explain why life often seems to get more complicated. # Highlights  ## What is Entropy and Why Does It Matter? - Entropy is a measure of disorder. And there are always far more disorderly variations than orderly ones. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt52g536as53mxhja02twk)) ## Why Does Entropy Matter for Your Life? - **Here’s the crucial thing about entropy: it always increases over time.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt5f6y5d4ab9akc0vayyg7)) - **This is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is one of the foundational concepts of chemistry and it is one of the fundamental laws of our universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt6h7wg6zms5j3begs1afz)) ## Without Effort, Life Tends to Lose Order - But because the universe naturally slides toward disorder, you have to expend energy to create stability, structure, and simplicity. Successful relationships require care and attention. Successful houses require cleaning and maintenance. Successful teams require communication and collaboration. Without effort, things will decay. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt8gjq7v92f9mrj4g9g7t0)) - **This insight—that disorder has a natural tendency to increase over time and that we can counteract that tendency by expending energy—reveals the core purpose of life. We must exert effort to create useful types of order that are resilient enough to withstand the unrelenting pull of entropy.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt8wgjkdz5jg27b8rmf4ry)) - “The ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.” —Steven Pinker ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt9937cxz4598dfx9zw202)) - In the words of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, “The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxt9jw4477g9advgts07vpd)) ## Entropy in Daily Life - To be happy, however, you need some degree of success in each major area. Thus, all happy families are alike because they all have a similar structure. Disorder can occur in many ways, but order, in only a few. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxtbp1fgtecv8b8swvc73x7)) - Evolutionary biologists use a term called “mismatch conditions” to describe when an organism is not well-suited for a condition it is facing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxtd3bj819b3jd0rybfwwmv)) - **It is likely you’ll face mismatch conditions in your life. At the very least, life will not be optimal—maybe you didn’t grow up in the optimal culture for your interests, maybe you were exposed to the wrong subject or sport, maybe you were born at the wrong time in history. It is far more likely that you are living in a mismatch condition than in a well-matched one.** **Knowing this, you must take it upon yourself to [design your ideal lifestyle](https://jamesclear.com/environment-design-organ-donation). You have to [turn a mismatch condition into a well-matched one](https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-myth). Optimal lives are designed, not discovered.** ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxtdhdy8ah3exs2nd4g0e97)) - It is nobody’s fault that life has problems. It is simply a law of probability. There are many disordered states and few ordered ones. Given the odds against us, what is remarkable is not that life has problems, but that we can solve them at all. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxxteq349g7wmvnmswzc1994))