Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Little, Brown and Company (2007), Edition: First, Hardcover, 336 pages
Description
A groundbreaking book that sheds new light on ideas of order - and shows how chaos, disorder, and mess make our world a better place! 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.… (more)
Media reviews
Forget what everyone from your first boss to your mother taught you. The authors of A Perfect Mess are here to say that "moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly
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organized ones." Even better, they have proof--in this compelling and comical tour of humanity's guilt-ridden love affair with accidents, messes, and randomness Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member kaelirenee
I listened to this while (you've gotta love this) deep-cleaning and organizing my house. The author uses many of the same techniques to exlpain why a little mess is good for you that Malcolm Gladwell uses to explain why snap thinking is a good thing (See: Blink). State a thesis, throw in some
On the whole, this book was entertaining and informative and certainly gives the reader a number of great excuses to NOT file, sort, arange, or organize. I think his editor may have taken this lesson too much to heart, though-it tends to hop around a lot and many of the stories are very non sequiter.
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facts, throw in some anecdotes, and throw in some interesting conjecture and you've got a book! Abrahamson doesn't have quite the finesse of Gladwell, but that still makes this an interesting read (or listen). It's really funny in some parts and makes me glad I have a little bit of a mess on my desk and in my home (I have a four year old, and to me, if you can't tell a child lives in a home where the child lives, you're doing something very wrong). However, while making statements about how the mind is evolutionarily set up to handle mess, he ignores the great stress that many people feel when confronted with the messiness of others. Maybe we can handle clutter well, but there is something to be said for laying out the outfit you're going to wear the next day or letting your employees know what is expected of them in the long term.On the whole, this book was entertaining and informative and certainly gives the reader a number of great excuses to NOT file, sort, arange, or organize. I think his editor may have taken this lesson too much to heart, though-it tends to hop around a lot and many of the stories are very non sequiter.
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LibraryThing member monda
The first half of A Perfect Mess is charming and informative. At the midpoint, I dreaded picking it back up. Every one of my reader friends told me to skim it, but I slogged on. And what a slog it was. Someone else took over the helm at the midpoint, and A Perfect Mess became a doctoral thesis. I'm
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glad I did hang on until the end, however, because the final two chapters had quite a bit to say about creativity and "mess" that I found worth reading. It took me a month of picking it up and putting it back down to finish this one, and I believe i should have listened to my friends. I could have skimmed it. Show Less
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
I really liked this one, more for some of the sparks it set off in my head than some of the actual content. This explores the phenomenon of professional Organisers and how they try to impose a rigid structure of order on people's lives. What isn't often explored in the quick TV show is the fact
Personally I'm in a bit too much of a mess but rigid order doesn't really work all that well for me either (yes I'm a librarian, yes some parts of my life are well-organised)
While complete chaos isn't ideal, people in general are messy and systems have to reflect this. This is a look at humanising systems and instead of everyone being the same, that we all chose a system that works (and complete chaos doesn't tend to be a workable system) for us and that we all should allow for the fact that other people's mileage may vary.
It does display a certain amount of bias towards a more chaotic feel but that's slightly refreshing (for me at least) in a sea of books about rigid order.
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that a lot of these people find it almost impossible to maintain this order. Without some form of fludity in the choice many people find order a difficult prospect, and many find that it really doesn't quite work, both on a professional and personal level. Personally I'm in a bit too much of a mess but rigid order doesn't really work all that well for me either (yes I'm a librarian, yes some parts of my life are well-organised)
While complete chaos isn't ideal, people in general are messy and systems have to reflect this. This is a look at humanising systems and instead of everyone being the same, that we all chose a system that works (and complete chaos doesn't tend to be a workable system) for us and that we all should allow for the fact that other people's mileage may vary.
It does display a certain amount of bias towards a more chaotic feel but that's slightly refreshing (for me at least) in a sea of books about rigid order.
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LibraryThing member montano
A real eye opener. When is the last time someone defended being messy? Such a wake up call for a culture obsessed with organizing shows, magazines, stores! The author backs up his claims with studies and statistics but more importantly raises the point that maybe your messy desk works just fine
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even if it doesn't look like a picture from the Container Store catalog. Show Less
LibraryThing member Silvernfire
A string of interesting anecdotes, mostly on the theme that a little unstructured disorder fosters creativity and innovation. And then the book just stops, as though the authors had run out of things to say.
LibraryThing member castiron
A book of case studies, from homes to business organizations, arguing that “mess” is not inherently bad and in many cases is actually beneficial. The authors’ point is very valid; American ideals of “neat” and “organized” do tend to be at levels that take far more time to maintain
My chief disagreement with the book (and it’s possible that they do address this and I overlooked it) is that the authors don’t address situations where your individual messiness affects other people — not aesthetically (the authors make it quite clear that they’re on the side of “none of your business what someone else’s desk/yard/business plan looks like”), but functionally or financially. Asking “Does this level of mess help or harm my overall functioning?” is a necessary question, but so is “Does this level of mess help or harm the functioning of people who I have obligations toward — my spouse, my family, my coworkers?”
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than they give back in efficiency. But after a while I found the book’s evangelization annoying. The authors do acknowledge that there are particular situations where neatness indeed pays off, and levels of messiness that do indeed reach the pathological; however, it reads more like a token “yeah, a sloppy operating room is bad” than a real acknowledgement that there is still such thing as inappropriately messy. (As for the final section on smells, I invite them to ride around in my ex’s car on a hot day sometime.)My chief disagreement with the book (and it’s possible that they do address this and I overlooked it) is that the authors don’t address situations where your individual messiness affects other people — not aesthetically (the authors make it quite clear that they’re on the side of “none of your business what someone else’s desk/yard/business plan looks like”), but functionally or financially. Asking “Does this level of mess help or harm my overall functioning?” is a necessary question, but so is “Does this level of mess help or harm the functioning of people who I have obligations toward — my spouse, my family, my coworkers?”
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LibraryThing member ancameme
Couldn't finish it (made it to page 84). I was looking forward to some good argumentative discourse but this book really let me down. While I do believe that sometimes the cost of organising something is much greater than what you get in return, the way the authors try to prove their point leaves
They use quirky anecdotes for proof that messy systems sometimes work only to constantly repeat that it's better to be somewhere in the middle.
The anecdotes aren't the annoying part, the argumentation and classification is. The way they "scientifically" try to differentiate mess from chaos is this: they won't use chaos because chaos, in modern sciences as chaos theory, implies that there's a hidden order; this differs from the common utilisation of the word chaos by us common people, so they thought they'll use mess as expressing exactly what common people understand by mess... Why not use chaos then if you'll go with what most people understand by it? Maybe because 'mess' is mild in comparison to 'chaos' thus making their point of view easier to agree with.
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the impression of deceit.They use quirky anecdotes for proof that messy systems sometimes work only to constantly repeat that it's better to be somewhere in the middle.
The anecdotes aren't the annoying part, the argumentation and classification is. The way they "scientifically" try to differentiate mess from chaos is this: they won't use chaos because chaos, in modern sciences as chaos theory, implies that there's a hidden order; this differs from the common utilisation of the word chaos by us common people, so they thought they'll use mess as expressing exactly what common people understand by mess... Why not use chaos then if you'll go with what most people understand by it? Maybe because 'mess' is mild in comparison to 'chaos' thus making their point of view easier to agree with.
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LibraryThing member jimocracy
At first, I didn't think I was going to like this book. The author seemed to be reaching with a lot of his examples of the advantages of disorder. But over time, the examples mounted and he shifted his focus on finding a balance or order to disorder. I really enjoyed his analysis and I appreciated
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that this book made me think outside the box. Show Less
LibraryThing member Salsabrarian
Audiobook narrated by Scott Brick. I didn't think this was the right voice for this book, but in any case my brand of messiness has been validated! What I got out of it: messiness is flexible; it reflects the organizational structures of individual minds; constant organizing and cleaning can be
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inefficient; messiness can lead to creative breakthroughs and discoveries. Show Less
LibraryThing member RajivC
I like this book because it speaks to me! I am - can be - messy at times, and it seems like my desk is in a state of clutter. But there is a method to this madness. I always move from item to item and seem to find what I want. It's when everything is in perfect order that I get lost.
This book is
Towards the end, the book becomes a bit repetitive. But, the last two chapters are important - they warn us of excessive disorder.
The chapters and sections on the kinds of people is delightful.
This book is
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very good in helping us understand the importance of a slight amount of mess in our lives - as long as it is not completely chaotic. A bit of mess helps us all become explorers. Towards the end, the book becomes a bit repetitive. But, the last two chapters are important - they warn us of excessive disorder.
The chapters and sections on the kinds of people is delightful.
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Subjects
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
336 p.; 8.4 inches
ISBN
0316114758 / 9780316114752