Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Tim Harford
2106, 294 pages
Nonfiction
We are asked to clean our rooms as children, and later on to have a neat desk at work, but are there times when being “messy” actually helps matters? Or when things don’t go according to plan, can the messiness of life sometimes provide better, unexpected outcomes?
Tim Harford shows how being messy or messy situations can produce amazing results. He begins with what happened when jazz pianist Keith Jarrett was presented with a horribly inadequate piano to play in Cologne, Germany. The young woman who organized the show begged him to perform. He at first refused to play, but finally agreed to go on so that she wouldn’t lose her job. And, well, I won’t give it away, but an amazing thing happened that night.
Creative people often have many ideas and have trouble keeping track of them. Choreographer Twyla Tharp has a great solution. She has a lot of boxes and put the ideas for each project in a separate box. That way when she has time, she can go back to a project and she won’t have lost her ideas.
Being in a messy environment can help your creativity. MIT’s Building 20 was an ugly place, but it was also a place where great things were done and done quickly. Scientists could quickly set up experiments, knock down walls, put in wiring and confer with each other. The building was an eyesore, but it was also a great place to test things and get results.
And did you know that being able to set up your desk the way that you like it will probably make you more productive? “People flourish when they control their own space,” (page 83) is one interesting quote from the book. Messy is a fascinating book with numerous examples of how being “messy” can actually be better than being neat in some situations. So “messy” people don’t despair – and read this book!
Robbin BaileyConcord Public Library
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