NEW YORK, NY — According to David Freedman, a neat and tidy desk may not be the product of an equally orderly and productive mind. “We think that being more organized and ordered and neat is a good thing and it turns out, that’s not always the case,” he confesses.Freedman and Eric Abrahamson have co-written A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, – and, along with publisher Little, Brown, and Co., went so far as to promote their work by hosting a contest to find the messiest desk in America. They found it in Texas, belonging to a schoolteacher.
Freedman and Abrahamson’s book takes the controversial position that neat freaks actually cost their companies money, waste time, and hamper creativity.
In Freedman’s experience, messiness is the world standard. “Most of us are messy,” he points out, “and most of us are messy at a level that works very, very well for us. In most cases, if we get a lot neater and more organized, we would be less effective.”
Examples of precisely this abound. After all, how many times have well-intended neatniks straightened a room, cleaned a desk, or organized a work place only to have the owner of the clutter find themselves utterly incapable of locating things that had previously been precisely where they’d left them?
Naturally, there are individuals and organizations dedicated to endless clutter busting who think Freedman and Abrahamson have minds that could use a little streamlining and efficiency boosting. Among them is the head of the National Association of Professional Organizers, Barry Izsak.
Izsak contends that the authors have confused being disorganized with being messy. “The bottom line is, the average person feels negatively affected by disorganization in many ways: increased stress, missed deadlines, lost opportunities, that sinking, drowning feeling.” As Izsak sees it, “For the average person, disorganization and chaos simply doesn’t feel good.”
Although perhaps not without their own agenda, Izsak’s group insists that being messy is expensive. To prove the point, NAPO refers to presumably well-organized research that focused on a company with 1,000 employees that work closely with information. Due to disorganization that made it difficult for workers to location and use information, it was concluded that the company lost nearly $2.5 million per year at a rate of $48,000 per week.
“You’re losing money if you’re not organized,” Izsak insists. Freedman, naturally, disagrees.
“People who are really, really neat, between what it takes to be really neat at the office and at home, typically will spend anywhere from an hour to four hours a day just organizing and neatening,” he illustrates. Time, after all, is also money.
Nonetheless, society is full of judgments about messy people, regardless of the flaws of the super neat. One of NAPO’s studies indicated that two-thirds of those polled were convinced that a messy desk was a sign that its owner had less drive than those whose desks were more orderly. Messy people, including the winner of Freedman and Abrahmson’s contest disagree, generally concluding that their mess is an organized one, especially in a world where everyone –especially women – have more important things to do with their time than endlessly clean and straighten.
Besides, Freedman thinks people underestimate the value of rediscovering items. “It becomes a natural reminder system.”
Not one that necessarily includes a reminder to clean, of course.
