The perfect mess

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The perfect chaos ( English A perfect mess ) is the title of a non-fiction book by the university professor for management at the School of Business at Columbia University Eric Abrahamson and the business and science journalist David H. Freedman , which was published in 2006 under the English title A perfect mess : the hidden benefits of disorder. How crammed closets, cluttered offices, and on-the-fly planning make the world a better place. has been published. In 2007 it was published in German translation and has also been translated into other languages.

Background and content

In their book, the two authors Abrahamson and Freedman asked themselves whether a chaotic, untidy workplace could possibly lead to a more productive and efficient work than, for example, a tidy desk. In their book they claim that an orderly person spends on average around 36% more time finding his notes than someone whose workplace seems to be in chaos. In her opinion, the systematic development and compliance with a system of order take a lot of time. For their research, the authors questioned more than 200 people to determine how they differentiate between order and disorder. Abrahamson Conclusion: “There is extreme order and extreme chaos. But in between there is no average that would apply to the majority of people. ”There are professional organizational consultants, especially in the USA , who argue that order saves a lot of time. The authors' survey revealed a different picture. “Ordinary people look for their apartment keys, glasses or driver's license just as often and for just as long as sloppy people.” According to them, order even hinders one's own creativity. In the disorder, things can lie next to each other that would be far separated from each other by order in stacks or shelves and thus cannot be used in parallel.

More and more people are planning their everyday lives, and companies are structuring their work processes in the hope of being able to work more efficiently. In their research on order and chaos, the authors found that order often costs more time, energy and money than it brings in. The book covers this in 13 chapters. Chapter 1 begins with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein :

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

"If a messy desk represents a messy mind, what does an empty desk say about the person using it?"

Original chapter

  • The cost of neatness
  • A measuring sampler
  • The history of mess
  • The benefits of mess
  • Messy people
  • Messy homes
  • Mess and organizations
  • Messy leadership
  • The politics of mess
  • Optimizing mess
  • Messy thinking
  • Pathological mess
  • The aesthetics of mess

Publications

  • Eric Abrahamson, David H. Freedman: A perfect mess. The hidden benefits of disorder. How crammed closets, cluttered offices, and on-the-fly planning make the world a better place . Little, Brown, New York 2006, ISBN 0-316-14529-7 .
  • Eric Abrahamson, David H. Freedman: The Perfect Chaos. Why messy people are happier and more efficient. Econ, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-430-30009-4 (translated from the American by Christoph Bausum).
  • Eric Abrahamson And David H. Freedman - A Perfect Mess. Discogs, accessed on May 23, 2017 (English, audio book, duration around 3 hours, read by David H. Freedman).

Reviews

  • Giles Foden: The present's a mess . In: The Guardian . March 24, 2007 (English, theguardian.com - rather critical voice).
  • Carsten Tergast: The perfect chaos . In: Focus Online . May 1, 2007 ( focus.de - book tip).
  • Tralee Pearce: Good news: Living with messiness has its benefits . In: The Globe and Mail . June 6, 2013 ( theglobeandmail.com ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Professor Profile: Eric Abrahamson of Columbia Business School ( metromba.com ).
  2. ↑ The perfect chaos. oe1.orf.at, accessed on May 23, 2017 .
  3. ↑ A Perfect Mess - content. Glose, accessed May 23, 2017 (American English).