The Perfect Mess

The Perfect Mess

 In an interview with Michael McLaughlin published in The New Writer’s Handbook (2007), Eric Abrahamson, co-author of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder¹, says

Your mess is perfect when it reaches the point at which, if you spent any more or any less time organizing, you would become inefficient².

When we see a perfectly³ clean, organized office, with it’s sleek⁴ glass-topped desk and a white MacBook centered perfectly atop the desk’s vast emptiness, we might find it cold, sterile⁵, oppressive even. It’s not a coincidence that the Death Star’s halls are clean, white — and cold!

On the flip⁶ side, when we see an office with a desk buried under mountains of paperwork, with trash bins⁷ overflowing⁸ and computer cables snaking haphazardly⁹ across the room, we often find it overwhelming, disgusting even — and rarely think well of its owner!

For most of us, there’s a “sweet spot”, somewhere between the Death Star and the garbage dump, where everything we need (and nothing we don’t) is close at hand, where the minimal¹⁰ amount of work yields the maximum gain. Where that sweet spot is will, naturally, be different for each of us — and finding it is often made difficult by confusing clutter¹¹ with messy perfection, or by confusing laziness with efficiency.

The Oppression of Organization

Too much organization, especially for creative people, can be stifling¹². One reason is that organization often stems not from our particular workspace needs but from moral and social judgments¹³ imposed on us (and internalized) externally. That is, we feel the need to organize to meet social standards that may not have anything to do with our own needs.

Messiness in Western society is associated with a lot of negative things. Clutter, disorder, messiness is associated with dirt, disease, and filth¹⁴. Messiness is considered inhuman¹⁵, uncivilized — remember Mom telling you your room was a “pig sty”?

It’s also associated with laziness, the greatest of sins in a Western mindset guided by the Protestant work ethic¹⁶. While we might feel that our work takes priority over cleaning up, there’s a part of us that will always feel that we should be doing it all — that not cleaning up is a sign of sloth¹⁷, no matter how much other work we’re getting done in the meantime.

Messiness is also a class issue. Middle-class reformers have always advocated lives of zen-like simplicity¹⁸ to their working-class charges. (In the 1910’s and ’20s, they would set up model homes in poor tenements¹⁹ showing workers and immigrants how a “proper” home should be kept — plain furniture, no curtains, open cupboards, hardwood floors, and bare walls were the norm, in contrast to the mish-mash of overstuffed furniture, cheap posters and wall calendars, heavy curtains, and multiple rugs the immigrants and workers preferred.) Wealthy people look down on the nouveau riche who stuff their homes with Baroque furniture, Persian rugs, and glod-trimmed everything. Non-clutter is the foundation of Apple’s success — among well-off, professional, upper-middle-class social elites²⁰ (and their emulators).

But there’s a cost for this kind of neatness, a point of diminishing returns beyond which more time spent organizing and cleaning means less time spent getting work done. This is especially true when workers (and I’m including the work of family, home life, and hobbies here as well as the work we do for our jobs) “borrow” systems that are advocated by professionals as “gospel” but do not truly reflect the individual’s working life or personality. As it happens, a great many highly organized people are no more able — and even less able — to find the things they need, when they need them, than the chronically²¹ messy.

The Cluttered²² Mind

On the other hand, keeping up some kind of order is not without value. As every craftsperson knows, tools and supplies that are tossed around haphazardly become broken or damaged, which means they aren’t able to do their work even when they can find their equipment. Spending time looking for some item you need right now is no fun, and surely inefficient.

Messiness can also indicate underlying²³ psychological blocks. People who refuse to clean up after themselves or to put things “in their place” might well be acting²⁴ out retained resistances to an overbearing parent or schoolteacher whose daily involvement in their lives is long past. Or they may be using their mess as an excuse to not get things done — because they don’t know what to do with themselves if they finish. Or they may act out of the unconscious fear that if they got everything in order, they’d have to start dealing²⁵ with more troubling aspects of their lives.

And messiness can be anti-social. Having a messy office can keep you from working well with others, even if you have no trouble working in it. Having a messy home can prevent you from inviting²⁶ others into it — or others from accepting such invitations. Our mess can become a barrier to — or, in some cases, insulation²⁷ from — interacting with the rest of the world.

HealthTop TipsNutritionLifestyle

Making the Perfect Mess

The trick, then, is to find the balance point between too much organization and too little. Where, exactly, that balancing point is will differ for each person, depending on their personality, their career, their family life, who they interact with, and a variety of other factors. There are, though, a few questions you can ask yourself to figure out where that balance point is for you and what kind of work you might need to do to reach it. You might want to think them through a few times for different contexts (e.g. office, kitchen, living area, garage/toolshed, etc.)

What are your organizing strengths? What do you do extremely well? Are there areas where you’re very organized, maybe related to a hobby or other specific activity? For instance, I play guitar, and all my musical equipment is always in one of two places, everything gets put back when I’m done, everything is well-maintained. 

What are your organizing weaknesses? In what part of your life are you always scrambling²⁸? What activities are the least efficient for you? In my case, I’m a bad filer — there’s something in me that says I can only file when I’m done with something, so if there’s a chance I might use it, it needs to stay out. 

        * What do you like most about whatever space you’re thinking of? 

        * What do you like least about that space? 

        * How would you feel if the space was completely clean? How would you feel if it were in complete disarray 

        * What three things do you regularly need that you can’t find? 

        * What could you do to make those three things more findable? 

        * What in your life do you have no problem finding? What is it that you always put back in an assigned place, or always know where it is even if it’s in a cluttered place? What is it about that thing or those things that make knowing its/their whereabouts important to you? 

        * What are the first three things you would clean if you knew an employer or client would be visiting you tomorrow? 

        * What piece of cleaning have you been putting off for a while? Why do you think you’ve resisted cleaning up just that one area? 

        * What are the tools you always need to have within arm’s reach? 

        * What else is within arm’s reach that you rarely or never use? 

        * How would you describe your space to someone you’d hired to help you get organized? 

        *  How would you organize your space if you had been hired to organize it? 

Like I said, there are no right or wrong answers, here. The idea is to help you find that comfortable medium, where the things you need are at hand and the things you don’t need are out of the way but still findable. I think most of us spend a lot of energy maintaining a “mental map” of our space, and I strongly believe in “off-loading” some of that work to well-designed systems — but there’s no use in doing that if you end up spending the same amount of mental energy maintaining your mental map of how the system works!

Instead, if you can figure out the “sweet spot”, you can focus on “nudging” your system back towards it. This is far preferable to the kind of worry and anxiety the prospect²⁹ of a “clean sweep” can create in us. Don’t, however, confuse comfort with effectiveness — we humans can get used to just about anything (there are people who mentally collapse³⁰ when removed from prison, hostage situations, even concentration camps!) but that doesn’t mean that it’s the most effective way for us to live.

Take some time to ask — and answer — the hard questions to produce an organizational system that works most effectively for you. That means that it does the most it can do with the least amount of energy — both in physical labor³¹ and in mental anguish³².

1 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

2 inefficient   

adj.效率低的，无效的

参考例句：

• The inefficient operation cost the firm a lot of money.低效率的运作使该公司损失了许多钱。
• Their communication systems are inefficient in the extreme.他们的通讯系统效率非常差。

3 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

4 sleek   

adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢

参考例句：

• Women preferred sleek,shiny hair with little decoration.女士们更喜欢略加修饰的光滑闪亮型秀发。
• The horse's coat was sleek and glossy.这匹马全身润泽有光。

5 sterile   

adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的

参考例句：

• This top fits over the bottle and keeps the teat sterile.这个盖子严实地盖在奶瓶上，保持奶嘴无菌。
• The farmers turned the sterile land into high fields.农民们把不毛之地变成了高产田。

6 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

7 bins   

n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 )；宽口箱（如面包箱，垃圾箱等）v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Garbage from all sources was deposited in bins on trolleys. 来自各方的垃圾是装在手推车上的垃圾箱里的。 来自辞典例句
• Would you be pleased at the prospect of its being on sale in dump bins? 对于它将被陈列在倾销箱中抛售这件事，你能欣然接受吗？ 来自辞典例句

8 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

9 haphazardly   

adv.偶然地，随意地，杂乱地

参考例句：

• The books were placed haphazardly on the shelf. 书籍乱七八糟地堆放在书架上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• It is foolish to haphazardly adventure. 随便冒险是愚蠢的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

10 minimal   

adj.尽可能少的，最小的

参考例句：

• They referred to this kind of art as minimal art.他们把这种艺术叫微型艺术。
• I stayed with friends, so my expenses were minimal.我住在朋友家，所以我的花费很小。

11 clutter   

n.零乱，杂乱；vt.弄乱，把…弄得杂乱

参考例句：

• The garage is in such a clutter that we can't find anything.车库如此凌乱，我们什么也找不到。
• We'll have to clear up all this clutter.我们得把这一切凌乱的东西整理清楚。

12 stifling   

a.令人窒息的

参考例句：

• The weather is stifling. It looks like rain. 今天太闷热，光景是要下雨。
• We were stifling in that hot room with all the windows closed. 我们在那间关着窗户的热屋子里，简直透不过气来。

13 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。

14 filth   

n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥

参考例句：

• I don't know how you can read such filth.我不明白你怎么会去读这种淫秽下流的东西。
• The dialogue was all filth and innuendo.这段对话全是下流的言辞和影射。

15 inhuman   

adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的

参考例句：

• We must unite the workers in fighting against inhuman conditions.我们必须使工人们团结起来反对那些难以忍受的工作条件。
• It was inhuman to refuse him permission to see his wife.不容许他去看自己的妻子是太不近人情了。

16 ethic   

n.道德标准，行为准则

参考例句：

• They instilled the work ethic into their children.他们在孩子们的心中注入了职业道德的理念。
• The connotation of education ethic is rooted in human nature's mobility.教育伦理的内涵根源于人本性的变动性。

17 sloth   

n.[动]树懒；懒惰，懒散

参考例句：

• Absence of competition makes for sloth.没有竞争会导致懒惰。
• The sloth spends most of its time hanging upside down from the branches.大部分时间里树懒都是倒挂在树枝上。

18 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

19 tenements   

n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Here were crumbling tenements, squalid courtyards and stinking alleys. 随处可见破烂的住房、肮脏的庭院和臭气熏天的小胡同。 来自辞典例句
• The tenements are in a poor section of the city. 共同住宅是在城中较贫苦的区域里。 来自辞典例句

20 elites   

精华( elite的名词复数 )； 精锐； 上层集团； （统称）掌权人物

参考例句：

• The elites are by their nature a factor contributing to underdevelopment. 这些上层人物天生是助长欠发达的因素。
• Elites always detest gifted and nimble outsiders. 社会名流对天赋聪明、多才多艺的局外人一向嫌恶。

21 chronically   

ad.长期地

参考例句：

• Similarly, any pigment nevus that is chronically irritated should be excised. 同样，凡是经常受慢性刺激的各种色素痣切勿予以切除。
• People chronically exposed to chlorine develop some degree of tolerance. 人长期接触氯气可以产生某种程度的耐受性。

22 cluttered   

v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满…

参考例句：

• The room is cluttered up with all kinds of things. 零七八碎的东西放满了一屋子。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The desk is cluttered with books and papers. 桌上乱糟糟地堆满了书报。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

23 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

24 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

25 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

26 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

27 insulation   

n.隔离；绝缘；隔热

参考例句：

• Please examine the insulation of the electric wires in my house.请检查一下我屋子里电线的绝缘情况。
• It is always difficult to assure good insulation between the electric leads.要保证两个电触头之间有良好的绝缘总是很困难的。

28 scrambling   

v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Scrambling up her hair, she darted out of the house. 她匆忙扎起头发，冲出房去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She is scrambling eggs. 她正在炒蛋。 来自《简明英汉词典》

29 prospect   

n.前景，前途；景色，视野

参考例句：

• This state of things holds out a cheerful prospect.事态呈现出可喜的前景。
• The prospect became more evident.前景变得更加明朗了。

30 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

31 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

32 anguish   

n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼

参考例句：

• She cried out for anguish at parting.分手时，她由于痛苦而失声大哭。
• The unspeakable anguish wrung his heart.难言的痛苦折磨着他的心。