THE LAW OF RANDOMNESS
DIRECTIONLESS, RESULTLESS
TBA
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates
"The random life is not much worth living."
The BuddhaKahuna
Learning via whatever comes up, with no pattern, is only minimally productive. What works is focused, systematic learning. It will multiply your progress immensely.
Living a life with a plan and on-purpose management will create a life that is incredibly worthwhile!
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LIVING LIFE RANDOMLY
Dealing with life randomly, handling things as they come up, doing what circumstances determine is a huge waste of life. Living randomly, one is buffeted back and forth, getting nowhere, almost like a drunk wobbling back and forth and not knowing which direction he is going - not likely to get anywhere.
Of course, that is the extreme. But it is surprising how many of us aren't too far off of that.
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Sidebar: Clarifying by contrast with the extreme
The ultimate random living would involve just meeting our impulses, where we would lie around eating alot and watching tv and looking for ways to be stimulated in some easy way, often with drugs or offenses to the nervous system (like hard rock music). It is a kind of mostly passive life, waiting to be "at the effect" of something, waiting to be rescued, stimulated, loved (without doing our part). You get the idea, I'm sure. The question is where on the scale do you want to live? Put an X there. Then mark where you are at right now. Note the gap. Then set about intentionally directing your efforts to close the gap.
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Random 
Directed
Directed Passive, Proactive Poor results Great results
Immediate Total reward
gratification is clear
1. Directed to what? Identify what is wanted
a. Be sure it is a true benefit. Since most people misunderstand what makes them
happy, they would have to determine what the real happiness causers are.
2. Identify where one is now. (The start point on the path)
3. Design the path to get to the destination.
I ask you is that so hard? The effort spent in doing that saves a huge amount of energy and effort that would be used for no benefit (or a low benefit), so the "cost" of doing this is not actually a cost, but a net benefit. [100 units of effort put out minus 1,000 units of effort saved = 900 units of effort saved. That effort can be used elsewhere to add even more benefits to the benefits already derived from the directed effort!]
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LIVING LIFE SYSTEMATICALLY
Dealing with life systematically works.
This means you would
1. Put things in your life on purpose, preferably what is the most important.
See The 80/20 Principle!
2. Schedule things that need to be done, with tickles to assure reminders.
3. Be organized, with a place for everything and ease of finding what is wanted.
ALOT OF WORK?
Alot of work?
No.
This is a misconception from having learned a False Belief. That belief is that "it is hard work to concentrate and focus and control things." That is not actually true. Do it when you're not tired and are fresh, and it will be effortless, unless you tell yourself "this is hard".
LESS WORK, BETTER RESULTS
It is actually a lot less work.
It just takes some effort, but effort that will save lots of future effort AND create much, much more of what we want.
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FOR THOSE INTERESTED, SOME MORE COMMENTS
Randomness is scattered effort that gets one nowhere.
Starting an activity and not finishing it to reap the rewards gets us nowhere, so it is a form of effort involving randomity (doing something without a purpose or intended result).
Gathering information for use and then not using it. (Having no system to review and classify it and set it up to refer to)
Being disorganized has a huge cost in effort, but it takes some effort to be organized.
Scattering stuff all over but not using it is scattered, undirected effort wasted, flushed down the toilet. Having to spend hours a day finding things when a few minutes of organization would have solved the problem fits right into the definition of random living. We fail to see the reward and we hate to spend our time doing it, but at a huge cost. Getting to be clear on this will help motivate us toward the reward. Seemingly ironically, to assure that we get organized we need to use an organized system to get us to put the effort out to be organized. It must be done by developing a structure and a habit (a habituated way of doing something virtually automatically and, correspondingly, with little effort; a habit is a way of lowering the amount of effort required to get a benefit).
The "effective process of change" is one of "non-randomness" and an example of "directness". If we try to do it in an unsystematic way, we will scatter our energies and we will likely fail. This happens over and over in our society, so we conclude that "change is hard" (wrong!) and that we "might as well not try because we'll just fail anyway and it will be wasted effort and we'll feel lots of pain" (a myth believed by many in our culture). Change will certainly fail if our efforts are not productive, so we need to use a productive path. Change will certainly fail if we are not sufficiently motivated by the total reward received over time and not convinced that the reward is greater than the cost. Change will certainly fail if we have nothing built in to encourage us and remind us and to get us back on track when we (almost inevitably) begin to drift off course. Read The Skillful, Effective Process For Changing - Very Doable.
Planning Overview And Discussion - Creating The Results You Want - Without this, you will get a lot less out of life!!!!
Effective, Real Learning - to Get What You Really Want In Life - To make the most progress the quickest with the best results for your time!
