I read an interesting article in Creative Livingmagazine published by Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. This article states that disorder in ones life and living is not a bad thing. That our ongoing effort to organize and order things is not necessarily as productive as one thinks. (I wonder if I can get me wife to buy into this.) Now we are not talking about being dirty, piggish, or a slob, but existing somewhere between the Oscar Madison’s and Felix Unger’s of the world.
We have all heard the qoute “Messy desk, messy mind”, but I prefer to qoute Albert Einstein “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?” Might a cluttered or messy person be more productive? Do we not spend less time organizing and putting things away but instead getting on with the work that needs to be done? Is not that file, paper, message, or result at our fingertips rather than stuffed in a draw?
The book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freeman examines benefits of disorder. They look at the natural world and find that disorder works better in the natural world that order. Think about how a replanted woodland looks at a tree farm type environment. With trees all the same size and shape. It limits sunlight effectively reaching the ground limiting undergrowth and other vegetation which in-turn limits food supply for ground bearing animals. While in an old growth forest with mixed tree types, ages, and sizes ground animals and vegetation of all types prosper.
The science of order started in 1911 with an article by Frederick Taylor. Working in the height of the industrial revolution his ideas espoused systems and a systemic approach to manufacturing and engineering that limited, if not illimited, individuality. These ideals evolved into personal life and we got the idea that organized, scheduled, and tidy was better. That organization equaled efficiency. It is a message that we as managers, parents, teachers, etc pass along: clean, uncluttered, organized, scheduled is better. Also, organized is easier to recognized than messy or disorganized.
Why, because defining clutter, messy, unorganized is diffucult ay best. When does messy become slovan? In messy the system is in the eye of the beholder.
Here are the Parasoxes of Disorder as defined by Abrahamson and Freeman (i.e. things for you to think about):
1. Procractination can be efficient. (I love this one. Unimportant things go way.)
2. Creativity is about putting things together that are not related to form a new idea. (If everything is in its box or folder how do you make connections.)
3. Messy systems can change and adapt more easily.
4. Rummaging helps make connections.
5. The more orderly people tend to be, the more time they spend looking for things. (Hard to prove this one I think, but I know at times it is hard to find something that I filed or stored.)
6. Messy people tend to have strategies that are very effective and efficient.
The main problem with disorder is it can not make you money. There is not an Uncontainer Store. We do not sell programs called The Seven Habits of Highly Disorganized People. Day Timers might become Day Trippers (bad pun from the Beetles song). According to the article, organiztion is a $45 Billion dollar industry. Unorganization costs you little.
Just something to thing about next time you spend an hour or more “getting organized”.
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