![]() The question is, did it help? Disorder Moulds the Mind Clearly their messiness didn’t hinder them. He wasn’t the only unkempt colossus, either - Mark Twain and Steve Jobs also toiled at tumultuous desks. The confusion of Einstein’s office did not prevent him discovering previously unimagined secrets of the universe. Yet from this muddle arose perhaps the greatest intellectual, not to mention creative, feats of the 20th century. Photos of his study, taken after his death in 1955, reveal a scene of scattered papers, heaped books and displaced odds and ends. With a quick wit you might counter: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” That quip is often misattributed to Albert Einstein, whose own clutter was indeed commensurate with his towering genius. Suppose an overbearing manager scolds you for your slovenly workspace. Cleanliness, as the proverb says, is next to godliness.” Another school of thought, however, preaches the value of disarray. “Historically, the evidence has favored the tidy camp. “Messy or tidy - which is better?” writes University of Minnesota researcher Kathleen D. Spick and span share a long association with morality and righteousness. But what if our immaculate home and work environments are holding us back? What if beautiful, novel ideas prosper in a state of disorder? As children we’re told to keep a clean bedroom, as adults a clean office. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.Throughout life we are trained in the art and virtue of tidiness. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. Global trade needs the shipping container. A large library needs a reference system. We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure in the life-changing magic of not tidying up' Oliver Burkeman The urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. His liberating message: you'll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. 'Ranging expertly across business, politics and the arts, Tim Harford makes a compelling case for the creative benefits of disorganization, improvisation and confusion. The new book from the author of The Undercover Economist shows us how we can lead messier lives - and why we should. Extended stock - Dispatch 5-7 days Description
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