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Mess is good?
delirium | Dec 26 2006
I should be packing, but instead I'm procrastinating and reading this article a friend pointed me to. It's a New York Times article from a few days ago entitled "Saying Yes to Mess" and it basically goes against the current hyper-organization trends. I thought it was appropriate to toss it into this forum for discussion, should folks be so inclined. I thought it had some good points, but some of it was quite a bit of a stretch. This bit: "a survey conducted last year by Ajilon Professional Staffing, in Saddle Brook, N.J., which linked messy desks to higher salaries (and neat ones to salaries under $35,000)" (that's all they said about it) irked me. First of all, who says that salaries over $35,000 are a single indicator of someone's success? There are jobs (e.g. non-profit) that are fulfilling and meaningful that may fall under that bracket, especially at first. Second, what the heck does "linked" mean? It could be a spurious relationship. They way they phrased it, however, I think it will be read by the average reader as "neat is bad." I'm not a neat person by any stretch at this point in my life, so I'm not being defensive exactly :) I just refuse to believe that it's a sign of greatness to have a room in your house that's full of junk you haven't touched in years, and that my desire to eliminate the layer of paper that seems to cover every inch of my poor little apartment is a bad thing. I guess it comes down to how much of an extreme we make anything -- first everything must be organized, now reading this article everyone must be a slob or their life is empty. Just do what works for you. If the mess bothers you, then it's worth it to spend an extra 30 minutes organizing per week. But you're not automatically a horrible human being or a bad parent if your clothes live in a pile on the floor of your closet. 2 Comments
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 Pfft.Submitted by aef on December 28, 2006 - 8:16am.
I think there are a couple of issues with the article that really stand out. The first is that it seems to conflate neatness and never having mess with disorganisation. Having a place for all your kitchen utensils doesn't mean they won't be scattered over the work-surfaces whilst you're cooking. Similarly, a big stack of dirty plates in a place that doesn't get in the way isn't neat, but it is organised. The second is the "correlation implies causality" mistake that still seems so common in non-scientific journalism. My experience is also that lower-paid people have tidier desks than higher-paid people, until you get to the top end where things start getting tidier again. But then, in my building the lower-paid people are likely to be doing simpler jobs with fewer types of information, input and output (eg order processing) or "driving a system" (eg finance clerk), and generally accessing less information at any one time than people with more loosely-defined and higher-paid jobs. This tends to make it easier to be organised doing one of the lower-paid jobs. Of course, at the high end people have assistants and generally don't need to get as involved in "detail" as the rest of us. Their roles require big-picture thinking rather than down-and-dirty organising. Possibly also they want to keep their nice desks clear so people can see how shiny they are :-) But certainly, organise for efficiency, aesthetics, happiness, etc, not just to "be organised." aef » POSTED IN:
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