Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230839 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

PUBLIC
"Three cheers for clutter!"

Review
"..if you have a tendency to be messy and have already broken your new year resolutions to be neater in future, it will certainly make you feel better about your natural inclinations... The authors of this book trawl the furthest reaches of psychology, management studies, biology and physics to show why a bit of disorder is good for you." (THE ECONOMIST )

"the authors conclude that there is an ideal level of messiness that makes any system more robust and productive... I would say more on the subject but I seem to have lost my pen somewhere in the detritus towering above me" (STEVEN POOLE THE GUARDIAN )

"Forget everything we told you last week about the importance of a clean and paperless office. In A PERFECT MESS: THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF DISORDER, Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman set out to prove that a little disorder makes us more productive than tight schedules, neatness and tidy desks." (THE GUARDIAN )

"a series of case studies challenging the conventional logic that businesses need good organisation." (DAILY EXPRESS )

"an entertaining and convincing attack on conventional wisdom. Read it and you need never again feel guilty about your untidy desk or non-existent lesson plan." (TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT - MAGAZINE )

"I hope his book becomes a bestseller. It is time that someone challenged the tautology that order is good, therefore it is good to have order. Mess equals possibility and I look forward to a long and profitable career as a professional disorganiser." (DAISY GOODWIN SUNDAY TIMES )

"there is something seductive in this book on the hidden benefits of disorder... a strangely tempting vision." (NICHOLAS BLINCOE DAILY TELEGRAPH - BOOK OF THE WEEK )

"it might just be the Small is Beautiful of the noughties." (THE HERALD )

"a messy desk is a far more efficient filing system tahn any number of labelled cabinets - it reflects the way people's brains are organised and allows for serendipitous discovery through random connection." (FINANCIAL TIMES )

"it's impossible not to be charmed" (TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT )

"they make a convincing case for the primacy of the messy over the neat one." (GILES FODEN GUARDIAN )

"Don't be afraid of mess. Embrace it! This is an original and entertaining study of why a modicum of chaos should be welcome." (MANAGEMENT TODAY )

"an engaging polemic against the neat-police who hold so much sway in our lives. For all to many people, neatness is a virtue in and of itself... the costs of being neat and well-organized frequently outweigh the benefits... a godsend for anyone who has a cleanliness fanatic for a boss." (ADAM WOOLDRIDGE WALL ST JOURNAL )

"a meandering, engaging tour of beneficial mess and the systems and individuals reaping those benefits." (NEW YORK TIMES )

"Three cheers for clutter!" (PUBLIC )

ADAM WOOLDRIDGE, WALL ST JOURNAL
"an engaging polemic against the neat-police who hold so much sway in our lives. For all to many people, neatness is a virtue in and of itself... the costs of being neat and well-organized frequently outweigh the benefits... a godsend for anyone who has a cleanliness fanatic for a boss."

Customer Reviews

Your Mileage may vary
And that's what this book is about. People are individuatls and while one person may benefit from rigid order another person feels stifled and can't work in a manner that benefits either them or their organisation. This books looks at the cult of order that has broken out and asks why it's held up to be so good when it has failed a lot of people, both on an individual level and on a societal level. Assuming that everyone wants order is a classic mistake made by planners and this asks why we are expected to go with them. Why not be individual and enjoy our lives, cleaning up a bit as we go?

There are portions of the book that don't seem to flow as well as others but still it's an interesting read.

Most of what this book did for me was made me think about how I organise life and it's a good contrast to some of the rigid schemes endorsed by many of the clutter-cleaning books out there.

Intriguing theory, well written and researched
I picked up this book on a whim on Thursday, because the title grabbed me - "A Perfect Mess - the hidden benefits of disorder"

It's another of these US Management books that are written by a pair of authors - one an academic and one a journalist - and once again, the formula works for me.

The central premise of the book is that, in the second half of the 20th Century, the assumption that "Better Organised Means More Effective" grew and grew, to the extent that many companies have official clear desk policies, and no senior business figure would ever dream of having anything other than a perfectly tidy desk in the official photo, and that this assumption is wrong.

The authors instead present a different view - that there is a continuum from "100% organised" to "100% disorganised" and that, for any given individual, the point of greatest productivity will lie somewhere along that continuum, not at the "100% organised" end.

Intuitively, it's appealing, not least because it panders to my own untidy desk.

My pet gripe amongst business books at the moment is the "interesting subject for a short article fleshed out to about 200 pages"-type book. The good news is that, while A Perfect Mess runs to over 300 pages, the information keeps flowing in a way that engages and expands the argument, rather than just re-stating it.

As an Entrepreneur, I'm naturally pre-disposed to like the kinds of books that criticise some of the extremes of corporate-behaviour, though as my own company is growing, I'm mellowing a little, and allowing processes to come in. This book has helped bring me back round to the view that processes should be there to help people, not to straight-jacket creativity.

As well as discussing the application of the principle to business, they also talk about domestic applications - how your natural mess level fits with your partner, and how the best thing for children may be to appreciate that they are not employees.

Overall, well recommended.