A Perfect Mess

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. The authors find an order in apparent chaos that they believe is efficient in its own right. This is a good audiobook to listen to when driving or working around the mess, er, house. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

October 16, 2006
The premise of this pop business book should generate reader goodwill—who won't appreciate being told that her messy desk is "perfect"? But despite their convincing defense of sloppy workstations, Columbia management professor Abrahamson (Change Without Pain
) and author Freedman (Corps Business
, etc.) squander their reader's indulgence by the end. Their thesis is solid enough: that organizational efforts tend to close off systems to random, unplanned influences that might lead to breakthroughs. But too many of the book's vaguely counterintuitive examples—to cite just one, that Ultimate Fighting is actually less injurious than boxing—stray from the central theme, giving their argument a shapeless, meandering feel. The authors prefer sprawling Los Angeles to fastidiously designed Paris and natural landscaping to lawns, decry clutter consultants, tight scheduling and "the bias towards neatness programmed into most of us." Noting that "organizations can be messy in highly useful ways," they urge companies to scrap long-term strategic planning, make contracts flexible and relinquish control over some processes. The advice is good and the arguments intriguing, and the book will probably be widely cited by those who have always resented neatniks. Too bad it's, well, such a mess.

August 15, 2007
In a society that worships the organized person, it is refreshing to have someone stand up for the disorganized. Abrahamson (professor of management at Columbia Business School) and Freedman (technology columnist atInc. magazine) make a strong case for developing a business and a lifestyle that favor more mess and less organization. They encourage listeners to consider the costs (monetary, personal, and professional) of establishing messless homes and offices. Through a range of examples from the arts, business, and science, they demonstrate that mess can foster creativity, flexibility, functionality, and growth. In the abridged version, narrator Freedman focuses on the business benefits of mess. He demonstrates why managers should be less tied to time-consuming organizational tasks and strategic plans that, unless ignored, often hamper a quick response to changing circumstances. The unabridged edition, read by Scott Brick, demonstrates how mess is an integral creative component for many people. Listeners are encouraged to accept more mess in their lives for benefits that range from higher productivity to more time with family and friends. Both programs will find an interested audience in most public and college libraries. For the person who simply wishes to glean the most pertinent information concerning business practices, the abridged version is acceptable. However, the unabridged set will be essential for those who want to know about the fascinating current research into all aspects of mess.-Kathleen Sullivan, Phoenix P.L.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2006
Flying utterly in the face of conventional wisdom, the authors turn the world of organization on its head to examine how messy systems can be more effective than highly organized ones. Neatness for its own sake, they say, not only has hidden costs in terms of man-hours that could be spent doing other work but it turns out that the highly touted advantages may not even exist. More loosely defined, moderately disorganized people and businesses seem to be more efficient, more robust, and more creative than the obsessively neat. As examples, the authors cite a hardware store crammed to the gills with every sort of product in seemingly disorganized fashion that does twice the business of the "neat" one down the block; a grade school where the students are allowed random access to learning materials with no structured lessons, and no discipline problems; and the seemingly chaotic life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who refuses to make appointments and sees everyone on the fly. The chronically messy will revel in the anecdotes but may need to skip the terminology.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)