It seems we’re all being Marie Kondoed to within an inch of our lives at the moment, but messiness isn’t necessarily bad, the author of a new book says.
Photo: 123RF
David Freedman told Jesse Mulligan that he and his co-author Eric Abrahamson decided to delve into the history of tidiness versus messiness; “there is a real need for perspective” he says.
The book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place - argues messy systems spur creativity and is in fact better for productivity than rigid neatness.
“We did a number of interviews, we went out and dug up a bunch of research, going back hundreds and even thousands of years, and essentially discovered that to a large extent, organisation is overblown. There are advantages to it, but there was some real disadvantages as well.”
So, what are the drawbacks to neatness?
Primarily time, says Freedman.
“It takes a lot of time, people feel great after straightening up …once you straighten up, you get things neat, you think great now I know where everything is. Everything has a place, everything looks great and you've got to keep it that way,” he says.
“It takes a surprising amount of work. There are people who spend all day straightening up in extreme cases, but it's certainly easy for anybody who's really neat to spend an hour to a day straightening up - you get that time right back if you allow a little bit of messiness in your life.”
Another advantage to messiness is exposure to stuff, he says.
“If you've locked everything away, it's out of sight, out of mind. And often people who are very neat have the intense experience of going through a closet that they haven't been through in a while and they find stuff they really missed.”
The same principle applies to the desk, he says. Tidy desks do not necessarily make tidy minds.
“People with cluttered desks sometimes do have the sharpest minds I've ever encountered - Einstein being an example. There are famous pictures of his fabulously messy office and desk.
“But I would also say that doesn't mean that if you have a neat desk that you don't have an organized mind, it doesn't seem to really fall into neat categories.”
And neat desks are not more efficient either, he says.
“On a clean desk, there isn't much there, you’ve filed it all away, you put it in shelves, you stuck it in closets, you have to remember where you put it. And organizing schemes that seem brilliant when you first come up with them, when you go to find things, suddenly, you can't remember where you put it.
"On a messy desk what happens is as you pile stuff up, the stuff that's recent ends up near the top of the pile, the stuff you use a lot ends up near the top of a pile and it ends up being a near perfect organizing scheme.”
Albert Einstein: messy desk, tidy mind. Photo: pixabay
There is evidence that a degree of messiness can spur creativity, Freedman says.
“If everything is constantly being filed away in its place, then you're really removing yourself from a lot of the inputs that are critical to being creative in business.
"Often some of the most creative people, people who are the most innovative and productive in business, do in fact have incredibly messy desks and work areas.”
The reason is they want to keep a lot of stuff that's important to them right in front of them, he says.
“One scientist ended up winning a Nobel Prize because of a connection he made between two letters that were on his desk, that he suddenly realised were related in an important scientific way. “
Freedman believes we are hard-wired to be tidy, but only in certain situations.
“There is evidence that, even in earliest human beings, there were places that were kept neat, organised, tools in one place, neat places to bury people, possibly for health reasons.
"On the other hand, we know that animals aren’t neat all the time. It's highly unlikely the earliest humans were either, we find plenty of mess at sites as well.”
In other words, he says, we kept things neat if it was a matter of life and death.
