Authors find a little mess is best

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

by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

Little Brown & Co., 328 pages, $25.99

Fellow messy people of the world, rejoice. We now have our emancipation proclamation.

"A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder" is a reasoned and researched book that assaults the idea that fastidiousness, tight planning and consistency mark the route to success.

"Though it flies in the face of almost universally accepted wisdom, moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly organized ones," the book states.

Two of the book's favorite examples: 1) Einstein had a messy desk; 2) Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident — he went on vacation and left Petri dishes out in his cluttered lab.

Abrahamson is a professor of management at Columbia University, and Freedman is a contributing editor at Inc. magazine who has written for Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek and Wired.

They don't advocate being a total slob.

"Some situations leave little room for mess; for example, nobody would want to go to a messy eye surgeon. Rather, we argue that there is an optimal level of mess for every aspect of every system."

One cited example in the book is the case of two magazine stores — one well-organized and the other haphazardly arranged. The sloppy store survived because it avoided the labor and computer cost of organizing everything.

And what about messy desks?

"As a desk becomes a little messy, more documents and other items may end up usefully at hand in sensible piles with few disadvantages, instead of filed away and forgotten."

They write that the "advantages of a little mess are flexibility, serendipitous connections and savings in the cost of neatness."

The messy-desk rationale was sweet music to me, because my annual job-performance reviews have included "messy work area" criticism.

The authors look at organizations, and two examples of what they like are Microsoft and, surprisingly, the U.S. Marine Corps.

"Microsoft has always operated in a usefully messy fashion, while Apple is the picture of rigid order," they write.

"(Bill) Gates is known for encouraging independent teams to go off in many, often conflicting directions, and is more tolerant of delays and changes."

Regarding the Marines, they report that the credo is "plan early, plan twice," with the final planning done close to the time of the mission.

"If war is a mess, than warriors should be messy, too," they write.

They contend that one example of useful "messiness" is jaywalking, which is common in New York. As a result, pedestrian traffic moves more smoothly there than in cities where laws against jaywalking are strictly enforced.

As they put it, "A little jaywalking can be a good thing, and ubiquitous jaywalking can be a big problem."

One problem with the book is that it flies off on some tangents, and you find yourself shaking your head saying, "What's this doing in here?"

One example: Their argument that no-holds-barred fighting in a cage is safer than boxing.

They also spend needless space categorizing types of messy and neat people.

A certain messiness probably should be expected in this book, and overall it is a provocative read.

Craig Smith is a Seattle Times sports writer: 206-464-8279 or csmith@seattletimes.com