Messy

Tim Harford’s new book, Messy, is about how and why clutter can be a good thing. He interviews many people who have messy desks. I, however, have a tidy desk. I keep my pens in the top left drawer, my pencils in the top right drawer and my paper clips in the bottom left drawer. I am well-organized and dislike chaos. The only things on my desk are a computer, my coffee mug and a picture of Venus de Milo. I admit, I am a tad compulsive. But even though I dislike messes, Mr. Harford has intrigued me with his notion that messiness can be beneficial to us. Mr Harford feels that we should embrace messiness rather than despise it because much of our modern life tends to make us too tidy—from how we communicate to our organization of files on our computers and how we plan our days.