A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

The mess on my desk has become almost unbearable. I say “almost” because I have not yet been pushed to the point of taking any sort of action about it. At the moment, there is approximately one square foot of workspace—actual desk visible—and the rest is covered by:

-1 wire in-basket filled with papers as old as three years
-3 piles of papers, one of which isn’t really a pile- it’s more of a spread
-3 piles of books, including one with a book open face-down on top
-1 pile of shipping receipts, including tracking numbers but no other information
-2 piles of full manila folders
-standing folder rack holding 19 manila folders, a full clipboard, and 3 undeposited checks
-laptop computer, on top of which is a pile of paper and my calendar
-telephone, pencil cup, monitor, keyboard, printer, adding machine
-box of notecards
-empty plate from yesterday’s breakfast, napkin

[Actually, I can see now that the only reason there is a square foot of space available is that it is necessary for the mouse to function.]

It’s a good thing I just read A Perfect Mess by Eric Abramson and David H. Freedman. According to Abramson and Freedman, my desk mess is not necessarily a bad thing—in fact, it may be beneficial in surprising ways. The core of their pro-mess argument is that organizing, storing, and maintaining the order in the various aspects of our lives is often more time-consuming, expensive, and restrictive than living with a moderate degree of mess. In the example of my desk, these messes do have some order—similar documents may be in the same pile with more recent documents closer to the top, and I am able to find things surprisingly quickly. In addition, there is the extra benefit of the serendipitous find, or juxtapositions of documents that spark creative thought.

This all makes sense, and sounds like a really interesting five-page New Yorker article. Unfortunately, it’s a 304-page book that exhaustingly (not exhaustively) details, mainly through anecdotal evidence, successful businesses, marriages, and scientific efforts and how messy behavior contributed to the success. This gets old after a while, mostly because it is so obvious that one could find some aspect of messiness in any organization, and there is no way to effectively asses the exact contribution of messiness in a real world situation that is always going to be a mixture of various degrees of orderliness.

For example, Abrahamson and Freedman cite a successful restaurant that does not have a theme to its décor or menu. Different parts of the restaurant are decorated in completely different ways. The menu does not match any particular type of cuisine, but offers small plates for patrons to choose and eat together (according to the authors, family style=mess). The restaurant got off to a rocky start, however, because diners were confused about the overwhelming number of choices on the menu and tended to order fewer dishes until the owner added a number of 7-dish combinations to the menu. So what really is the cause of the restaurant’s success? The eclectic décor and cuisine is most certainly a contributor, but it wasn’t until they introduced an antidote to the “messiness” of the menu that diners felt comfortable ordering. Abrahamson and Freedman essentially ignore all the details in their anecdotes that are counter to their argument.

The most helpful conclusion that the authors do make is that there is nothing inherently bad about a certain degree of mess, and those who are ashamed of or stressed out by their desks or closets need not be. I do agree with their core argument that mess may have some benefits. But it seems to me that every individual or organization will function optimally at a different combination of messiness v. orderliness, so case studies of others’ failures or successes are not very useful. The concept, however, was interesting enough for me to finish reading the book, instead of spending that time cleaning up my desk.

A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

tags: books book reviews mess psychology Eric Abrahamson David Freedman