Product Description

"An engaging polemic against the neat-police who hold so much sway over our lives." -The Wall Street Journal

Enthusiastically embraced by readers everywhere, this groundbreaking book is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success.

With an astounding array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play in business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, hardware stores, 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. From clutter to time sprawl to blurring of categories, A PERFECT MESS will forever change the way we think about disorder.

"A compelling and comical tour of humanity's guilt-ridden love affair with accidents, messes, and randomness... Combine the world-is-not-as-it-seems mindset of Freakonomics with the delicious celebration of popular culture found in Everything Bad Is Good for You to get the cocktail-party-chatter-ready anecdotes of 'messiness leading to genius' in A PERFECT MESS." -Fast Company

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162108 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Observer
"Timely reassurance to those of us who fear and despise pristine houses, perfect schedules and neat-freakery of every stripe"

Sunday Telegraph
"provocative and often amusing...Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman's thesis will come as a relief to many"

Guardian
"this engaging and surprisingly well-ordered book... is the perfect excuse to break that new year's resolution to keep your desk tidy"

Customer Reviews

Seeking Functional Organization
The book starts out, and is touted, as something that will convince us that being disorderly will make the world a better place. In the end, the book does not do this, instead it provides a much more balanced perspective than it initially eludes to.

From my personal experience, operating in a mess is great in the creative stages of something (i.e. when doing design work). Coming up with new things, ideas, elements that do not currently exist in the world, requires a lot of input - a lot of outside influence from various sources so that something "new" and unique can be synthesized. It's almost impossible to know where the inspiration for this creation will come from, so just tossing everything into the soup works very well, then you add it to the flavor you're stewing. You ladle out the chunks that don't work when you start paring down that soup.

As your idea formulates, you pare it down to something you can build. As you get to finishing touches you are seeking less and less input - whatever you are designing is taking shape and by definition that limits the options you have at your disposal. As you approach the finished product, your work is clean, clear, well defined. It is very organized, less messy.

If you are limited and operate in only one aspect of this spectrum (i.e. design), then you can possibly always operate in mess. If you are widely adept, and operate in the entire spectrum (from design, to creation, to implementation, and maintenance) you know that certain levels of mess benefit different points along that spectrum.

The secret to maximizing your potential is knowing where you are along that spectrum and making use of the appropriate mode of operating in it. I would be willing to bet, however, that many may seek this volume merely as a way to justify an "existence"...and I don't think that it's just that simple. Existing constantly in mess does not ALWAYS contribute to greater insights, quality, existence, and certainly doesn't contribute to greater clarity.

This work does a good job of convincing us of the value of mess. However, it stretches into realms (particularly toward the end) that divert from the point; taking us off on tangents that do not contribute to the central thesis. Yeah, not all results come from perfect order and not all come from perfect messes. The authors acknowledge the limitations of each, if you read it without an agenda you'll get a balanced perspective from the overall volume.

If you already understand that spending too much time being organized can limit creativity (and reduce availability of/openness to ideas) then this book is not for you. If you feel that nothing should be organized, then the book could serve you well. If you feel that everything must be in it's place and there is no room in your life for disorganization (even temporarily) then the book is definitely for you.

In the end the book does not convince us to be entirely disorganized; it teaches more about what functional disorganization is like. (The same principles will hold for organization - it can be both functional and dysfunctional.) Either approach is functional when it serves us, they become dysfunctional when operating (living) in that system takes more effort than not operating in it would.

In the words of the authors:

"The advantages and disadvantages to increasing mess don't kick in smoothly and steadily. With most systems, adding a little mess tends to lead quickly to some big advantages with few drawbacks. As the mess grows, the rate at which the advantages grow tends to slow and eventually trail off - a desk that's already pretty messy doesn't become a lot more useful when you add a bit more mess to it. Meanwhile, the rate at which the disadvantages accumulate will eventually start to take off - a very messy desk with just a small amount of open workspace can dramatically leap into utter uselessness when a little additional mess takes over that space. The result is that as mess is added to a system, the disadvantages will at some point start to overwhelm the advantages."

Validation
I purchased the hardcover of this book for the title alone. I live in a perfect mess. But the inside of the book was just as good as the cover, because it gave proof to my theory that I'm not messy, I'm "alternatively organized" (a term I coined here for the first time and stake full ownership of). Nonetheless, when I got to the last chapter, notes on pathological mess, I did an abrupt u-turn.

Although written in an academic tone, this book is a great read for those of us who have lived under the guilt associated with messiness. I took it to work and and quoted from it, particularly the parts about flexibility and creativity, to my boss and to my fellow teachers. A very gratifying experience, indeed.

You can understand more about why this book is so special to me by reading the book:

Lucy Adams, author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny