A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered

[brotherS]

http://www.amazon.co...ed-Fly/dp/0316114758

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place

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.

If you believe that being very organized is always best, you will be shocked when you read this book. You'll discover that there is little to no research proving that you save time by plannig your day, but that there is extensive research showing that you can lose a lot of time by over-planning your day.

Really interesting!

[tomos]

phew

[allen]

Awe shit, gotta keep my wife away from this -- unless it is said tongue in cheek.

I'm a bit of a neat freak always smilingly-nagging at my wife because her car, desk and any other personal space are always by far the most cluttered points in view.

[app103]

It's not too often I make impulse purchases (and definately not books), but I made an exception for this one.

It just might become my coffee table book when I am done reading it...if I can find a spot among the mess there. 

[brotherS]

I'm a bit of a neat freak always smilingly-nagging at my wife [...]

-allen (April 15, 2008, 02:39 PM)

If you'd ask her she'd probably tell you she's noticing your nagging more than your smiling.


@app103: 

[Deozaan]

I think app103 phrased it more appropriately (in IRC) by calling it organized chaos. It's not to say that having everything be a total mess is beneficial. But if you have some clutter around the house it's probably not as bad as many so-called "neat freaks" might lead you to believe.

[iphigenie]

Some chaos is good for creativity - too much structure and too much time spent reorganising all the time sure aren't helping. Overplanning is certainly not helping anyone and its a major pain when someone imposes it on us.

On the other hand clutter tends to sap some of my energy and productivity - there's always so much visible to do, makes it hard to actually do anything or stick with one thing long enough to finish it.