Chaos Map

We gain a deep sense of purpose when we stumble onto a vague possibility — in a relationship or idea — and transform it into a reliable pattern.

We feel it when we learn something new, mend a relationship, clean up our room, or create art.

Our pattern-making drive is so fundamental that we even seek it out secondhand by watching other humans — real or fictional — bring chaos to order.

Everyone brings some amount of chaos to order but has a unique gravitational pull more towards one side or the other.

The few who gravitate towards chaos are galvanized by vague, big-picture possibilities as much as they are bored by anything already worked out.

On this side of the map, even the most useful norms, routines, and methods feel stifling. A chaos explorer is more likely to scrap the practical for a partially articulated experiment or meta-intuition — anything to avoid the mundane predictability and tedium of order.

Most of us are comfortable within the reliable, safe structure of order, most of the time. We prefer practical patterns forged from our own experience, social norms, and time-tested traditions.

We'll incrementally optimize the order when it makes good sense but resist replacing what already works with something that only might work.

In the middle of the map lies the epicenter of progress. We enter it whenever we create or reform the order of things.

But a smaller group gravitates into this polarized space, holding contradictory impulses in tension:

Living relational patterns stabilize into abstract concepts. Our concepts in turn reshape our lived experience.

Not only will we prefer more or less chaos or order in a given map, but we'll also gravitate more towards making relational or conceptual patterns.

Those of us who gravitate towards the relational world prioritize weaving patterns of friendship, reciprocity, and culture.

We'll enjoy working to organize, motivate, and interact with people in the real world and are likely to pursue relational work like teaching, parenting, management, care services, etc.

Those of us more at home within the conceptual world are interested in the underlying patterns that influence people up in the relational world. But we'll prefer to observe them at a distance, under the surface.

We'll enjoy working with systems, mental models, and principles. As such, we're more inclined to choose careers that afford us lots of time to think – fields like science, art, and accounting.

When put together, our (x) affinity for order or chaos and (y) preference for relational or conceptual patterns locate our gravity point — the mental space that feels most natural, energizing, and satisfying to us.

We engage in a constant dance around our gravity point, moving between chaos and order and relationships and concepts in unique ways.

An arrow motion is integrative: no matter how far it gravitates towards chaos as a starting point, it always keeps one eye on a specific endpoint where a new pattern may slot within an already established pattern. This drive towards a resolution point relies on sequencing effort towards the goal while resisting open-ended explorations or rabbit trails.

Those of us with a propensity to use the arrow motion value cohesion, method, and incremental progress towards a plausible endpoint. It's the preferred motion of managers, strategists, innovators, reformers — anyone driven to optimize the existing order.

A spiral motion explores: when something sparks our attention, rather than fitting it within a pre-existing pattern or goal we freely spiral around it like a radar as patterns emerge. This intense — but loose — focus around our own gravity point makes a spiral motion adaptive, unpredictable, and idiosyncratic. Within a spiraling thought-current, we're prepared to throw out any prior assumption or convention while stubbornly clinging to a seemingly random aspect we're momentarily homed in on... until we jump to the next thing.

Those of us who prefer a spiral motion home in on what seems timely to us, disregarding the existing order and wider context in favor of starting "from scratch." This frees us up to work bottom up with a non-linear velocity that eschews traditional systems, methods, or "common sense" — yet often results in unexpected success. But just as often, the patterns it creates form a disconnected island apart from the integrated order of things, leaving them unfinished or with unrealized potential we've already moved on from.

The spiral motion is often used by inventors, socialites, artists, gurus, poets, emergency responders, and nutty professors.

Plotting our gravity point (x,y) and natural motion (m) within a map gives us big-picture clarity on where we optimally play within a workplace, family, or community. Unlike personality tests or other modern ways of understanding ourselves, a map-first view recognizes that half the picture is the context we're playing within.

This wider view frees us to see a broader field of play that defines us as much as we define it.

Once we can see ourselves within — not isolated from — a shared mental space, we're free to see where others are coming from more coherently and empathetically. What seemed irrational or strange not only becomes more understandable within a broader view, but is revealed to be an essential role played on a broader field.

Mapping the big picture not only yields a calm clarity but frees us to strategize our way towards a more stable, creative harmony.