Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World

by Tim Harford

by 1994 Crichton had the astonishing distinction of having created the world’s most commercially successful novel (Disclosure), TV show (ER) and film (Jurassic Park).

each project in the network of enterprises provides an escape from the others. In truly original work, there will always be impasses and blind alleys. Having another project to turn to can prevent a setback from turning into a crushing experience.

The empowered office was a great success – people got 30 per cent more done there than in the lean office and about 15 per cent more than in the enriched office. These are large effects; three people in empowered offices achieved almost as much as four people in lean offices. The enriched office was a modest success, but the disempowered office, which offered exactly the same physical amenities, produced low productivity and low morale.

People flourish when they control their own space.

The unexamined assumption is that this jumbled untidiness is bad and that if the office looks streamlined then it will also be more productive. But the evidence suggests the opposite.

targets tend to be simple, while the world is complicated. Anything specific enough to be quantifiable is probably too specific to reflect a messy situation.

This results in short-termism, where long-term investment is sacrificed in order to hit a short-term target. For example, a manager can skimp on training or maintenance, or just squeeze pay. In the short term, profits will rise; in the long term, the company will suffer. A wise manager understands this, but she may wish to hit her targets anyway. Then there is the ‘silo effect’, where one department hits its targets by taking short-cuts that damage other departments. In each case, we assume that by measuring one thing, we’re really measuring everything. That is delusional. We hit the target, but miss the point.

What’s the solution to the problem of the tidy-minded target? One possible approach is to make the targets more sophisticated, covering more measures with more attention to detail.

Instead, we should be defining many rules of thumb and deliberately leaving it ambiguous as to which will be used in any given situation.

Yet automatic systems want to be tidy. Once an algorithm or a database has placed you in a particular category, the black-and-white definitions of the data discourage argument and uncertainty.

Systems that supplant, not support, human decision-making are everywhere. We worry that the robots are taking our jobs, but just as common a problem is that the robots are taking our judgement.

Babies collect a rich broth of microbes from their mothers, but this transfer does not occur in the womb as one might expect. Instead, they are smeared with bacteria as they pass through the birth canal – if they pass through the birth canal. This may explain the otherwise-puzzling fact that babies born by caesarean section suffer more from asthma and allergies.

Hidalgo has discovered that there is a strong correlation between being a diversified economy, a complex economy and a rich economy.

The economies that do lots of things tend to do most of those things very well. That is the road to prosperity – and in an unpredictable world, it is the road to resilience too.

When Jimmy Carter won the US Presidency in 1976, just over a quarter of Americans lived in ‘landslide counties’, where Carter had either won or lost by 20 percentage points. By the 2012 presidential election, more than half of Americans lived in landslide counties.

A messy desk isn’t nearly as chaotic as it at first seems. There’s a natural tendency towards a very pragmatic system of organisation based simply on the fact that the useful stuff keeps on getting picked up and left on the top of the pile.

we probably could benefit from nudging ourselves a little in that direction – making fewer firm commitments and leaving more flexibility to adapt to circumstances. A plan that is too specific will soon lie in tatters. Daily plans are tidy, but life is messy.

When we overprotect our children, denying them the opportunity to practise their own skills, learn to make wise and foolish choices, to experience pain and loss, and generally make an almighty mess, we believe we’re treating them with love – but we may also be limiting their scope to become fully human.