The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

"The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up"

This video presentation explains Marie Kondo's: "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" book. I briefly read an excerpt and it's written in a charming and strangely witty but practical manner. From that, I think she's onto something. In our daily routines, we can categorize what we do according to: Production, Consumption and Maintenance as per Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. If we keep a "To Do List" we can distribute the activities into one of the preceding categories; of which good "Housekeeping" is a daily chore for most people. The same applies to our computers. I was having to use CCleaner software on my old Windows XP Operating System to keep it running faster:-

CCleaner: Computer performance and maintenance on Windows: Complicated!

It was actually quite successful and improved my computer's performance: You can see the complexity of cleaning the OS and it's files and organization: "Dejunking". One day I decided to overhaul the entire operating system, as Microsoft had ceased to service updates for XP and replace it with a GNU/Linux distribution. Here's an analogy I copied from GreenHornLinux:-

House Analogy: Different 'design principles' between Windows OS & Linux OS

Windows on the left starts with a big foundation base (~2Gb disk image). This is mostly "fixed" which means any additions must pile on top. Compare this to Linux which starts with the bare minimum foundation base (From 50Mb-700Mb iso) and allows users to choose the size and the type of building they want. It boils down to a large marketshare of people want the "work" done for them and to merely act as "end-users" who use the computer and it "just works" whereas Linux users can tailor the computer to their various multiple and many needs more effectively and efficiently - so long as they learn how.

There's some very basic rules with computer software:-

• Bugs are inevitable and cause 'things to go wrong'.
• The more software code, the more bugs will multiply, in general.
• Requirements change: Which means the software itself needs changing: Updating, replacing, removing, moving and maintaining.

Coming back to the "Tidying Advice" above: It's a logistical issue: The more things you have the more you have to organize and keep organized: The more maintenance is required. In How do you become a "eurosceptic"? the analogy of increase in complexity comparing an old, bakelite telephone to a modern, smartphone (a full micro-hardware computer OS, effectively!) of the role of governance from the 1970's-20XX's by Dr. RAE North. We looked at the EU "design" in Can we have our cake and eat it too? and again the increase in complexity and instability in Jean Monnet's "Engrenage": Destination Unknown? 

We're seeing the same issues of "Maintenance and Complexity and Instability" in the growth and growth of the EU. It's effectively a bit like Windows OS: For many "end-users" it's been doing all the hard-work that they don't want to know about! But if we look at  the recent EU Offical sources:-

The Five Presidents' Report: Maintenance is time-consuming

• "The Five Presidents' Report": Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union - Report by: Jean-Claude Juncker in close cooperation with Donald Tusk, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Mario Draghi and Martin Schulz
• State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity - Speech by Jean-Claude Juncker - President of the European Commission

 There's more but the above is sufficient; the argument can boiled down to low production is leading to low consumption and hence "we're in maintenance mode". Now coming back to the idea of managing a computer OS and the difference between Linux and Windows: It's easier to maintain an OS that is more basic, a smaller foundation to begin with. This idea allows us to consider an important question on "What is good governance, essentially?" 

James Madison: "Father of the Constitution"

Quoting James Madison in The American Republic: The Fourth Form Government By C. Michael Barry:-

“A good gov­ern­ment im­plies two things: first, fi­deli­ty to the ob­ject of gov­ern­ment, which is the hap­pi­ness of the peo­ple; sec­ond­ly, knowl­edge of the means by which that ob­ject can be best at­tained. Some gov­ern­ments are de­fi­cient in both these qual­i­ties; most gov­ern­ments are de­fi­cient in the first. I scru­ple not to as­sert, that in Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments too lit­tle at­ten­tion has been paid to the last. The fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion avoids this er­ror; and what mer­its par­tic­u­lar no­tice, it pro­vides for the last in a mode which in­creas­es the se­cu­ri­ty for the first.”

We can think of this as the basic foundation of our government from which to "tidy-up" everything. As we learnt in Lakshmi: Goddess of Prosperity (1) the "control of the money supply" is closely tied up to the "core functioning" of our governments. Due to the speed of globalization "We The People" as "End-Users" from our governments in both Westminster and the European Union, our requirements are changing rapidly. We need a much more flexible and continuously updating system of governance that is agile enough to service the above core principle of "good governance". See FLEXCIT:-

 "FLexCit", a composite comprising the word "exit" and "FL" from flexible response, with the "C" from continuous development

And as James Madison observes we need a system that: "pro­vides for the last in a mode which in­creas­es the se­cu­ri­ty for the first". We can learn a thing or two from Marie Kondo about "Tidying Up Our Government" and about approaching the right frame of mind. She describes how really we should sort and select the things that really bring "joy and happiness" to our lives.