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by
Tim Harford
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July 20 - July 20, 2020
Messy disruptions will be most powerful when combined with creative skill. The disruption puts an artist, scientist, or engineer in unpromising territory—a deep valley rather than a familiar hilltop. But then expertise kicks in and finds ways to move upward again: the climb finishes at a new peak, perhaps lower than the old one, but perhaps unexpectedly higher.
when we listen to a Bowie album, we don’t see the mess and frustration of the recording session; we can just enjoy the beauty that it produced.
“The enemy of creative work is boredom, actually,” he says. “And the friend is alertness.
assigning a box to every project.
the most irreplaceable social connections were the distant ones.
“There’s a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.”
In the United States, neighborhoods are increasingly segregated—economically, politically, almost any way one cares to look at the data.
It is one thing to sharpen and straighten all the pencils on one’s own desk, metaphorically or otherwise. To order someone else to sharpen and straighten the pencils on their own desk displays a curious value system in which superficial neatness is worth the price of deep resentment.
Resist the urge to tidy up. Leave the mess—and your workers—alone.
We rarely have complete control, just a comforting illusion of control instead.
So what does it take to successfully improvise? The first element, paradoxically, is practice.
One cluster of headaches reflects the fact that 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.
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.
“Digital devices tune out small errors while creating opportunities for large errors.”
the human made the forecast and then asked the machine for a second opinion.
neighborhoods have a tendency to segregate themselves,
The second is more avoidable—a bureaucratic desire for tidy, segregated cities is expressed in zoning and planning laws that are designed to prevent different aspects of city life from getting tangled up with one another.
by preventing the development of new affordable housing, zoning restrictions often amplify existing racial and social inequalities.19
Mess invites us to impose our own oversimplified order on the universe: it makes us racists.
cities that hosted a complex patchwork of nationalities prospered as a result. U.S.-born residents enjoyed higher wages and, if they were landlords, could charge higher rents.
diversity builds resilience may not seem surprising. Most of us know that monoculture is a risky idea,
every society needs its outsiders to bring new attitudes, ideas, and perspectives.
if you just dump all your e-mail into a folder called “archive,” you will find your e-mails more quickly than if you hide them in a tidy structure of folders.*
“What is your most treasured possession?” “What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?” “What is your favorite journey?” and “How would you like to die?” All of these questions beat “What do you do for a living?”
Real creativity, excitement, and humanity lie in the messy parts of life, not the tidy ones.
Recent research has found a correlation between playing informal games as a child, and being creative as an adult; the opposite was true of the time spent playing formal, organized games.
Tim Gill, a researcher and writer on childhood, estimates that the rubbery surface that has become standard in most playgrounds constitutes up to 40 percent of the entire cost of the playground.40 Yet it’s unclear that these expensive KFC playgrounds play host to fewer accidents. David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University, has been unable to find any indication that injury rates are falling in these sanitized playgrounds in either the United States or the United Kingdom.
high speeds; dangerous tools such as knives and axes; dangerous elements such as fire and water; rough play such as fighting; and the risk of getting lost. And yet, the researchers concluded, such play offers benefits: more exercise, improved social skills, reduced aggression, and reduced injuries.
children adjust for risk: if the ground is harder, the play equipment sharp-edged, the spaces and structures uneven, they will be more careful.
“When the distance between all the rungs in a climbing net or a ladder is exactly the same, the child has no need to concentrate on where he puts his feet. Standardization is dangerous because play becomes simplified and the child does not have to worry about his movements. This lesson cannot be carried over to all the knobbly and asymmetrical forms with which one is confronted throughout life.”
when they returned to the classroom from their feral wanderings, their behavior was better. They paid attention in class. Bullying fell to the extent that the school abolished a “time-out” room and halved the number of teachers on duty at playtime.44
New Guinea, who “consider young children to be autonomous individuals whose desires should not be thwarted, and who are allowed to play with dangerous objects such as sharp knives, hot pots, and fires.” Though plenty of these kids grow up with physical scars, argues Diamond, they are the opposite of being emotionally scarred. Their “emotional security, self-confidence, curiosity, and autonomy” set them apart from children brought up by cautious Westerners.45
Most playgrounds are not open to the talents and purposes of the children who use them. A swing is for swinging; a merry-go-round is for merrily going around. But it is not only children who find themselves nudged and controlled as they wander curiously through life.