What do you do when you’ve only started work a short while ago, and your work desk is already in a mess, and your boss walks by your desk every morning?

And what do you do when your boss dumps a book on one of the piles on your desk, a book that talks about mess?

You read it of course.

It helps that the book’s title is A Perfect Mess. The subtitle is even more compelling: “The Hidden Benefits of Disorder–How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.”

A Perfect Mess

As the subtitle suggests, this book explains why some messiness is actually beneficial and even more productive than a neat and highly-organised system.

Like a (moderately) messy desk being more efficient than a very neat one - something which I’ve known for a while. It’s always comforting to have someone else agree with you on something so radical.

Besides efficiency, messy desks can inspire serendipitous ideas and breakthroughs, when things are connected together by chance, just because they happen to be placed close together.

The book also covers other areas where some mess can be beneficial, including work - work planning. Everyone knows that long-term planning is useless. What most people don’t realise is that it can be harmful as well. No wonder the company I work for doesn’t have a real long-term plan, but it’s doing well. No wonder the boss passed me the book…

Whatever it is, this is an eye-opening book, whether you’re a messy Bessie or a neat Nazi. If you’re the messy type (like me), you won’t be ashamed of your mess again after reading this.

P.S. I find some of the cases in the book a little stretched, probably because of the pro-mess bias of the authors. But not enough to harm the book.