Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

by Tim Harford

Gruber and Davis call this pattern of different projects at different stages of fruition a “network of enterprises.” Such a network of parallel projects has four clear benefits, one of them practical and the others more psychological. The practical benefit is that the multiple projects cross-fertilize. The knowledge gained in one enterprise provides the key to unlock another. This is Erez Aiden’s advantage. He moves back and forth across his network of enterprises, solving an impasse on one project with ideas from another, or unexpectedly fusing two disparate lines of work. Dick Drew did much the same at 3M. Or as David Bowie once put it, “The idea of mixtures has always been something that I’ve found absolutely fascinating, using the wrong pieces of information and putting them together and finding a third piece of information.”33 The psychological advantages may be just as important. First is the point emphasized by Brian Eno, that a fresh context is exciting; having several projects may seem distracting, but instead the variety grabs our attention—we’re like tourists gawping at details that a local would find mundane. The second advantage is that while we’re paying close attention to one project, we may be unconsciously processing another—as with the cliché of inspiration striking in the shower. Some scientists believe that this unconscious processing is an important key to solving creative problems.34 John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, argues that daydr...