MESS WITH THIS
We frown upon the disorganized, but, in fact, a certain amount of disorder is efficient
BY DOUG FRENCH
The perfect Saturday for me includes a trip to Barnes & Nobles to pick up a Barron�s and browse. Amazon gets most of my considerable book business, but there is nothing like roaming the shelves and tables at B&N to see if an interesting title that I have no knowledge of and certainly wasn�t shopping for catches my fancy.
A Perfect Mess is the perfect example of a gem I picked up on a leisurely Saturday excursion. To say that the title spoke to me is an understatement. The disorder of my desks at work and home are considerable, making the �Neats� in my life uncomfortable at best. As it turns out, I�m a �Scruffy,� a term coined by David Kirsh, a cognitive science researcher at the University of California at San Diego, who studies messy and neat offices.
While Neats rely on �explicit coordinating structures� like lists and day planners to figure out their work plans, Scruffies are �data driven,� not planning what they do but letting the environment give them clues as to what to work on. Authors Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman explain that Scruffies �do tend to derive great advantage from the random prompts around them,� but Kirsh warns that Scruffies �at least slightly overestimate their ability to find things in the mess and underestimate the occasional inefficiencies related to their disordered activity landscapes.�
But the book is not just about messy offices by a long shot. The authors have chapters on the history of mess, the benefits of mess, messy people and homes, the politics of mess and pathological mess. In the area of messy thinking, Abrahamson and Freedman make the case that humans do their best thinking when their attention is diverted. But the brain avoids disorder and randomness. We fabricate justice (if something bad happened to someone, they somehow deserved it); our brains try to find order in inkblots or on a decade-old cheese sandwich. Our memories are faulty because our brains �retroactively neaten the world.� Our brains create gambling systems and neatly categorize everything.
Elbert �Burt� Rutan is profiled as being an example of messy leadership. Rutan runs his aircraft design company Scaled Composites, very loosely with no rules. He believes managing a company is like designing an aircraft: �instead of trying to figure out the best way to do something and sticking to it, just try out an approach, and keep fixing it.� Rutan also believes that employees should question what his company is doing at all times and question their own work. Rutan�s vision has paid off for Scaled Composites. The company won the $10-million Ansari X-Prize and the task of creating a space vehicle for Virgin Galactic.
The latest craze in city planning � New Urbanism � takes some heat in the politics of mess chapter. Growth expert Joel Kotkin believes that highly ordered cities are perfect for the people these cities were designed for: �advanced-degreed professionals who love hip, urban life � who are relatively affluent, cultured, design conscious, work focused, craving high stimulation, and as likely to take root in ideas as in places.� In other words: �They�re building ephemeral cities for the nomadic rich,� says Kotkin.
But, a good share of Americans do not want what New Urbanism has too offer. They would rather have a yard and a white-picket fence: a place where they can raise their children. New Urbanism will relegate these people to the outer rings of modern cities far away from employment. Cities that have embraced New Urbanism, like San Francisco, are driving families out. The City by the Bay has the lowest under-18-year-old population percentage of any big city in America. In Seattle, dogs outnumber children, and San Jose closes schools each year.
Los Angeles is what Kotkin believes is a livable city, and he is especially fond of strip malls, the bane of city planners. �What America needs,� according to Kotkin, �is more sprawling, mixed blurred, disorganized cities.�
The overriding point that A Perfect Mess makes is that the benefits of organization are overrated. And that, although many in society look down upon disorganized as sloppy and muddleheaded, in fact, the truth is that a certain amount of disorder is more efficient and makes for better decision-making and superior results. Or maybe this is just all messy rationalizing.
Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine, is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies.
