A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place - Softcover
"An engaging polemic against the neat-police who hold so much sway over our lives." -The Wall Street Journal
Enthusiastically embraced by readers everywhere, this groundbreaking book is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success.
With an astounding array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play in business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, hardware stores, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones. From clutter to time sprawl to blurring of categories, A PERFECT MESS will forever change the way we think about disorder.
"A compelling and comical tour of humanity's guilt-ridden love affair with accidents, messes, and randomness... Combine the world-is-not-as-it-seems mindset of Freakonomics with the delicious celebration of popular culture found in Everything Bad Is Good for You to get the cocktail-party-chatter-ready anecdotes of 'messiness leading to genius' in A PERFECT MESS." -Fast Company
Enthusiastically embraced by readers everywhere, this groundbreaking book is an antidote to the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success.
With an astounding array of anecdotes and case studies of the useful role mess can play in business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, hardware stores, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones. From clutter to time sprawl to blurring of categories, A PERFECT MESS will forever change the way we think about disorder.
"A compelling and comical tour of humanity's guilt-ridden love affair with accidents, messes, and randomness... Combine the world-is-not-as-it-seems mindset of Freakonomics with the delicious celebration of popular culture found in Everything Bad Is Good for You to get the cocktail-party-chatter-ready anecdotes of 'messiness leading to genius' in A PERFECT MESS." -Fast Company
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Eric Abrahamson is a professor of management at Columbia University's School of Business, and author of Change Without Pain. David H. Freedman is the author of three books, and is a business and science journalist who has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, and Wired, among others. Abrahamson lives in New York, and Freedman in Massachusetts.
From AudioFile:
Is your workspace a complex but personal jumble of information, data, and stuff? Is your home a comfortable space that has some black holes of organization? Then you may be on the track to greater productivity, creativity, and happiness, according to the authors. Reader David Freedman makes this a friendly listen as the authors reveal such details as the possibility that the discovery of penicillin would not have occurred if the lab had not been a mess. The authors find an order in apparent chaos that they believe is efficient in its own right. This is a good audiobook to listen to when driving or working around the mess, er, house. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBack Bay Books
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 0316013994
- ISBN 13 9780316013994
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages327
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Perfect Mess : The Hidden Benefits of Disorder : How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
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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 Abrahamson, Eric, Freedman, David H. [Paperback ]
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A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder can actually make systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder-or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid. No longer! With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess, A Perfect Mess overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahmson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones.Applying this idea on scales both large (government, society) and small (desktops, garages), A Perfect Mess uncovers all the ways messiness can trump neatness, and will help you assess the right amount of disorder for any system. Whether it's your company's management plan or your hallway closet that bedevils you, this book will show you why to say yes to mess. Combining business, science, history, and psychology, this groundbreaking book sheds new light on ideas of order and shows how chaos, disorder, and mess make the world a better place. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780316013994
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A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
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A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
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