The urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche.
Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned,
scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a
script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise
and file away. We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a
point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs
the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement
units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate
middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to
insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical
place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers
and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in
check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our
children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to
the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when
chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . .
messiness. The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes
rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how
qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and
creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that
produces them. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being
messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles
of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the
recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important
presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and
economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably
made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a
little mess.
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