Messy
- Author Tim Harford
- Narrator Roger Davis
- Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
- Run Time 10 hours and 8 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Self-help, personal development and practical advice.
Titles Purchased
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- 6-10
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- Over 20
Price p/Title
- £7.99
- £6.99
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness.
The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them.
This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.
Critics Review
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Ranging expertly across business, politics and the arts, Tim Harford makes a compelling case for the creative benefits of disorganization, improvisation and confusion. His liberating message: you’ll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure in the life-changing magic of not tidying up
Oliver Burkeman -
[Harford’s] best and deepest book
Tyler Cowen -
Messy masterfully weaves together anecdote and academic work
The Economist -
Harford urges us to recapture our autonomy . . . fascinating . . . Harford’s argument goes beyond aesthetics, resurfacing over and over in his engrossing narrative
New York Times -
A profoundly stimulating canter through why we should all allow a little mess – but not chaos – in our lives, on our desks, and in our minds. A powerful expansion of Harford’s previous excellent work, from a fascinating and contrasting viewpoint
David Halpern -
It’s a very very good book, full of wise counterintuitions and clever insights
Brian Eno
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