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Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Unavailable
Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Unavailable
Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Audiobook9 hours

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

Written by Tim Harford

Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it's important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value - creativity, responsiveness, resilience - are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them.

From the music studio of Brian Eno to the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King, Jr., from the board room to the classroom, messiness lies at the core of how we innovate, how we achieve, how we reach each other - in short, how we succeed.

In Messy, you'll learn about the unexpected connections between creativity and mess; understand why unexpected changes of plans, unfamiliar people, and unforeseen events can help generate new ideas and opportunities as they make you anxious and angry; and come to appreciate that the human inclination for tidiness - in our personal and professional lives, online, even in children's play - can mask deep and debilitating fragility that keep us from innovation.

Stimulating and readable as it points exciting ways forward, Messy is an insightful exploration of the real advantages of mess in our lives.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 4, 2016
ISBN9781524702403
Unavailable
Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
Author

Tim Harford

Tim Harford is the Undercover Economist and Dear Economist columnist for the Financial Times. His writing has also appeared in Esquire, Forbes, New York magazine, Wired, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. His books include Adapt, The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life. Harford presents the popular BBC radio show More or Less and is a visiting fellow at London's Cass Business School. He is the winner of the 2006 Bastiat Prize for economic journalism and the 2010 Royal Statistical Society Award for excellence in journalism.

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Reviews for Messy

Rating: 3.9066666933333334 out of 5 stars
4/5

75 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I picked this book up because I heard the author interviewed on a podcast. Unfortunately I found that all the interesting highlights had been covered in the interview, and there wasn't much more material of interest in the book. It felt like one of those books written by a journalist (thought I believe Harford isn't a journalist) who had an interesting topic but not enough material for a full book, so toward the end it gets less and less interesting as they pad it out to reach the necessary length. It also seemed to me to make the mistake sometimes of confusing correlation with causation. Some very successful people are easily distracted and sidetracked, therefore that is essential to success! Eh, or maybe not. I would hazard a guess that there are an order of magnitude more easily distracted and sidetracked people who accomplish nothing much than those who manage to figure out how to channel it in a productive way. There are some entertaining stories in the book but, like Gladwell, in his stories of successful men and why they are successful Harford is far too comfortable in identifying one component of a complex person or situation and saying: THIS is why they got good results. It is undoubtedly not that simple. Which is why I don't read Gladwell anymore, and I don't think I'll dip back into any other books with social observations written by economists in the future.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely fantastic. A very counterintuitive look at disorder, genius and the making of some of the most amazing discoveries and art the world has seen. Highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great idea's for those whose need for perfection prevents them from getting things done.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great read I enjoyed it, I like the stories in it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of the best books I have read in the last few years and I read about 2-6 books per week in Non Fiction. If you like Freakonomics or Dan Ariely books, you might love this too.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well written anecdotes around the title subject. I like popular history, but there's a limit to the number of these kind of business books I can read. Also not really in the mood to hear about the orange fucker in the primary.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My desk is a mess. I have a laptop, a second screen, keyboard, a task light and a lava lamp, a stationary rack and pencil holder, scrap paper and a pad to write on, as well as 18 books and various other items of detritus. To be honest, it could do with a bit of a tidy up. One day I will…

    Most people want a tidy place to work in. Some businesses are really strict on this, enforcing numerous draconian rules as to what you can or can’t have on your desk, the number of personal photos allowed and so on. These businesses make look slick and have the impression of performing well, but they are soulless places and they are missing that extra spark that disorganization, improvisation and confusion can bring to the creative process.

    In this highly entertaining book, Tim Harford argues that clean pristine working areas, rather we need a little mess and disorder in our work and home lives to get that creativity back that is ultimately enriching. He uses lots of examples of how people have not had the exact equipment that they wanted or had the usual preparation time for a particular thing, and it turned out to be one of the best performance or speeches of their life.

    Being organised does get things done, but that spark of creativity that happens when things are not quite so is where the magic lies. I really liked this book, partly because I am not so tidy, and tend to have lots of things on the go at any one time, but also because I think on a fundamental level he is right. I particularly liked the story of a lab in America that managed to create all manner of things and the reason was because of the layout of the building and people with a variety of different interests and skills would pass each other, get talking and spark new ideas off. If you are a person who likes all their pencils lined up, then this might not be the book for you, but perhaps you should read it, you never know what might happen…
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book's cover features blurbs by Brian Eno and Tyler Cowen. Otherwise, I never would have thought this was a book I'd enjoy. I fall on the 'tidy' end of the spectrum. I didn't want to read a book about how the most awesome, brilliant, and creative people in the world all have/had sloppy desks. Not only is it not my world - it tends to be a boring kind of book. But - despite the requisite chapters about sloppy desks and messy workplaces, this book isn't about how you really should dis-organize your space so much as it's about the sometimes (!) beneficial effects of disorder in general. The first chapter on Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" sets the tone; to get people to be more creative and motivated in the studio, Eno created a deck of cards with suggestions of off-the-wall things to think about or do. He'd periodically pick a card, and suddenly everyone was instructed to try to "Think like a gardener," or all trade instruments. There's a chapter about a crazy military commander or two, who'd keep the enemy - and sometimes their own men - just bewildered enough to allow the most improbable victories to be snatched from the jaws of defeat. There's a chapter about the famous "Building 20" at MIT, an ugly pile of cinderblocks with an unorganized disarray of offices, which nevertheless was a hotbed of scientific discovery and invention in the 20th century. So it isn't about dividing people into messy vs. neat, so much as it's about how helpful it can often be when things DON'T follow the expected path. Harford encourages us to appreciate rather than rue the Oscar Madison that lives in all of us. Some (!) disorder is good for you; it shakes you up; you function better; it's real life. The book flowed well (dare I say it was well organized?); I always looked forward to returning to it each day. I'm a fan!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Messy is yet another non-fiction books that falls in the genre created for writers, economist, and area experts etc. to expound on an amorphous topic by using examples from many different areas of life. They are usually written along the lines of a self-help/business/leadership book. They use the famous case study, combination of stories of the intrepid researchers, some rudimentary statistics to show that there is gravitas in what they say and it is all wrapped up in a nice tidy package and conclusions.Even though I am cynical about the packaging and structure of the genre, I actually enjoyed Messy very much. A bit of confirmation bias maybe at play here since I am personally “messy” in the way I work, the way I organize myself, and the way I think abstractly. So it is with great excitement that I ordered this book. Tim Harford had me at hello. Fortunately for me, he delivered on what he had promised. I thoroughly enjoyed the read and he did get me thinking about the nature and beauty of disorder in the things that affects us.Harford, a very well-known writer and economist is the author of a number of bestselling books, mostly found in the business best-seller list. I suspect this one will also be climbing the charts. Truth of the matter is that Harford is a very thorough researcher, an excellent writer and explainer, and never lets the details fog up the big picture for the reader. The thesis of the book is captured in the sub title of the book itself: The Power of Disorder to Transform our lives. That is: disorder is good for us and we just get ourselves in trouble when we try to inject too much order and discipline into our daily lives. Harford divides his tome into none distinct words, each one is the lead in for a number of stories pertinent to the topic of messiness. They are: Creativity, Collaboration, Workplaces, Improvisation, Winning, Incentives, Automation, Resilience, and Life. He employs examples from music, politics, business, forestry, architecture, military strategy, education, engineering, mathematics, life sciences etc. to illustrate his point, all the while entertaining us with his stories, and Harford is a very good story teller. Most importantly, he is also very good at weaving all these disparate stories into a cogent and logical thesis. I deliberately did not wish to give examples of his stories in this review because I did not want to deprive other readers the chance to read Harford’s prose and steal his thunder. It is best if you read the book.Time and again, Harford persuasively tells us his stories and engages us into the depths of his thoughts regarding the main theme. He is thoroughly convincing in his arguments. He chides the people in the stories about being too ordered, too disciplined, and too devoted to linear thinking. Even though I was convinced early on in the reading process, I feel like his writing provided me with even more proof of what I already believed and made me think about other extensions of the messiness idea. I will be referring back to this book as I ponder his ideas. I obviously recommend the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "we are always reaching for tidy answers, only to find that they're of little use when the questions get messy." (258)

    It's funny; I've read so many of these books that I have become familiar with the stories it uses: Jane Jacobs, Flight 447, Amazon, Rommel, and so on. Unlike some of the others (The Checklist Manifesto, for instance), the argument is not for making things more orderly, but for accepting messiness and its virtues. The book is highly readable and entertaining, and it makes some good points, though I cannot stand having piles of papers around even though I know perfectly well that my filing system is where papers go to die. The human urge for order is not something you can just deny out-of-hand, no matter how counterproductive it may be.

    I recommend it. It's not intensely deep, but it has many interesting ideas.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like Tim Harford's books. He makes economics fun for those of us who wonder about it but don't care about the maths.I admit I picked this up because I am chronically messy and have the guilt trip about it especially with Marie Kondo currently adding to it.I feel a lot less guilt about it now and if Harford is right my way of filing anywhere and everywhere on my desk etc. is actually more efficient than putting it all away. I'll take that.