Product Description

Like Freakonomics, here is a book that combines counterintuitive thinking with stories from everyday life to provide a striking new view of how our world works. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder actually makes systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder--or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid. No longer! With a spectacular array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play, here is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones. A Perfect Mess will help readers assess what the right amount of disorder is for a given system, and how to apply these ideas onto a large scale--government, society-- and on a small scale--in your attic, kitchen, or office. A Perfect Mess will forever change the way we think about those unruly heaps of paper on our desks.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155207 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The premise of this pop business book should generate reader goodwill—who won't appreciate being told that her messy desk is "perfect"? But despite their convincing defense of sloppy workstations, Columbia management professor Abrahamson (Change Without Pain) and author Freedman (Corps Business, etc.) squander their reader's indulgence by the end. Their thesis is solid enough: that organizational efforts tend to close off systems to random, unplanned influences that might lead to breakthroughs. But too many of the book's vaguely counterintuitive examples—to cite just one, that Ultimate Fighting is actually less injurious than boxing—stray from the central theme, giving their argument a shapeless, meandering feel. The authors prefer sprawling Los Angeles to fastidiously designed Paris and natural landscaping to lawns, decry clutter consultants, tight scheduling and "the bias towards neatness programmed into most of us." Noting that "organizations can be messy in highly useful ways," they urge companies to scrap long-term strategic planning, make contracts flexible and relinquish control over some processes. The advice is good and the arguments intriguing, and the book will probably be widely cited by those who have always resented neatniks. Too bad it's, well, such a mess. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Is your workspace a complex but personal jumble of information, data, and stuff? Is your home a comfortable space that has some black holes of organization? Then you may be on the track to greater productivity, creativity, and happiness, according to the authors. Reader David Freedman makes this a friendly listen as the authors reveal such details as the possibility that the discovery of penicillin would not have occurred if the lab had not been a mess. The authors find an order in apparent chaos that they believe is efficient in its own right. This is a good audiobook to listen to when driving or working around the mess, er, house. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Flying utterly in the face of conventional wisdom, the authors turn the world of organization on its head to examine how messy systems can be more effective than highly organized ones. Neatness for its own sake, they say, not only has hidden costs in terms of man-hours that could be spent doing other work but it turns out that the highly touted advantages may not even exist. More loosely defined, moderately disorganized people and businesses seem to be more efficient, more robust, and more creative than the obsessively neat. As examples, the authors cite a hardware store crammed to the gills with every sort of product in seemingly disorganized fashion that does twice the business of the "neat" one down the block; a grade school where the students are allowed random access to learning materials with no structured lessons, and no discipline problems; and the seemingly chaotic life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who refuses to make appointments and sees everyone on the fly. The chronically messy will revel in the anecdotes but may need to skip the terminology. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Little Substance Plenty of Anecdotes
Fun read. Waste of paper. If you are looking for some proof that mess, even possibly your mess, is good, do not expect to find the proof. The book is mostly full of anecdotes about the success of messy scenarios. Some examples are backed by studies and evidence, but most are not. I could easily see a separate book that would contradict the evidence in this book, as well as plenty of anecdotes explaining failed scenarios because of too much mess. Also, the book is not well-written in places where sentences end in a preposition.

An Amusing Diversion
The premise of this book was great; those of us who do not thrive in the world of color-coded file boxes should not feel anxious and less successful because we aren't organized enough. In America's constant quest for progress, we have defaulted to a rigid standard of neatness and organization.

People who have a more creative style and organize information differently from what is touted in the popular television shows and de-cluttering books will enjoy the validation; however, the authors wander off-topic, state conflicting conclusions, and throw in everything they have, including the theoretical kitchen sink. By about chapter 5, I was reading this more as a parody of the initial theory, which made the rest of the book great fun. I think it was the Arnold Schwartzeneger piece that took it over the top for me.

Overall, A Perfect Mess was an amusing diversion and a refreshing departure from the "buy a million plastic boxes, hide all your stuff in them, and stack them alphabetically by label" world of organization. I gave it three stars because I was looking for more substance and less fluff. As a parody, I probably would have rated it four stars.

Mess without Guilt!
Commuting to work, I listened to the audio version of this wonderful book and, with every mile, found myself more relaxed with my own clutter. The examples and insights into messiness--from personal to professional to political mess--are fascinating. The authors explode many of the cliches about the virtues of extreme organization and the vices of mess. Highly recommended!