Personal Organization for Degenerates

Most books about personal organization are written by highly capable people trying to become more capable. The underlying assumption is that time freed up potentially implies greater accomplishment. Productivity and continuous improvement become ends in themselves.

The guiding principle of Personal Organization for Degenerates is that time freed up by personal organization creates more time for unstructured, centrifugal activity. Dissolution is the natural state of life. Time spent on organization is necessary, but real joy comes from the unstructured time that is afforded by the investment you make in getting organized. A degenerate person, in casting the present against the future, makes decisions that appear unwise and inconsistent. Degenerates are wired in such a way that they strongly value the present over the future. This is a book about how people with degenerate wiring can nonetheless organize their affairs intelligently.

Among the positive traits of degenerates are a certain flexibility of thought and a tendency to consider out-of-the-box solutions. I would imagine that some of the organizational solutions I’ve come up with have merit even for non-degenerates.