Cluttered Comfort

A lively and overstated case for messiness at home and in the workplace.

Can faith in messiness really bring efficiency? Abrahamson and Freedman 8212; predictably, one a professor, at Columbia University8217;s business school, and the latter a journalist 8212; juxtapose two ways of organising one8217;s papers. First consider the Noguchi filing system, they say.

Named after Japanese economist and guru of 8220;hyperorganization8221;, here is how it works. 8220;Every single incoming document, no matter what it is, is placed in a large envelope. The contents are noted on the side of the envelope, which is then placed on its edge on a shelf, so that all the envelopes line up in a horizontal row like books. New envelopes are inserted on the left side of the row, and any envelope that8217;s taken out is put back on the left. After a while, those envelopes that contain the most recent and most often accessed documents will end up on the left side of the row, while the oldest and least used documents will be on the right. In theory, this makes documents easier to access, since they are automatically prioritized by frequency of use.8221;

Those with a high tolerance of clutter and a flair for working through it, the writers say, will find this strategy familiar. Except that they don8217;t put in much effort to operationalise this organising principle. When papers and files are piled up on a desk, the most frequently used and the most recently accessed will tend to be nearer the top of the heap. The same, one supposes, applies to messy closets.

Abrahamson and Freedman make a passionate 8212; and amusingly overstated 8212; case for messiness. Not only is it often inefficient to try to straighten the clutter, but the effort is also unnecessarily costly. But how do we define the kind of mess that is being celebrated? 8220;Roughly speaking, a system is messy if its elements are scattered, mixed up, or varied due to some measure of randomness, or if for all practical purposes it appears random from someone8217;s point of view.8221;

The authors at various points invite the reader to imagine how bereft of certain scientific discoveries we would be without fortuitous messiness. Wilhelm Rontgen could have had a more arduous time discovering X-rays. Alexander Fleming may actually never have discovered penicillin. In fact, his lab has been reconstructed in a London hospital from photographs and it is by all accounts a tribute to unfettered messiness.

But it is not just desks and workspaces that benefit from messiness. We may, argue the writers, be more rooted if we didn8217;t try to order out thought with the perils it brings of 8220;fabricating justice8221;, 8220;neatening sights and sounds8221;, imposing 8220;Roshomonic memory8221; and 8220;neatening chance8221;. And as for all those management consultants and container salespersons who cite studies to show how neater organisation 8212; in processes, personnel and materials 8212; works, they ask the reader to remember the Hawthorne effect. By this, they say people tend to work harder when they know they are being observed. So any change that comes in a period of intense observation will probably work.

In a most amusing case study, they put Arnold Schwarzenegger8217;s ability to get so many tasks accomplished in his many careers simultaneously down to his refusal to commit to a schedule. 8220;By blending several types of mess 8212; the time sprawl of not keeping a schedule, the improvisation in his commitments, the blurring of political and social boundaries, the inconsistency in his stances, the distraction in jumping between careers 8212; Schwarzenegger has essentially fashioned himself as an easily customizable and recustomizable figure.8221;

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Is this case against organisation and neatness overstretched? Yes, of course. Which is just as well 8212; it makes for a lively read, and given the obvious zeal with which the arguments are made, the reader is forced to keep a sense of perspective.