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Book summary and reviews of A Perfect Mess by David H. Freedman

A Perfect Mess by David H. Freedman

A Perfect Mess

The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place

by David H. Freedman

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  • Published:
  • Jan 2007
    336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A groundbreaking book that sheds new light on ideas of order--and shows how chaos, disorder, and mess make our world a better place! Like Freakonomics, here is a book that combines counterintuitive thinking with stories from everyday life to provide a striking new view of how our world works. Ever since Einstein's study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder actually makes systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder--or suffer guilt over the mess they can't avoid.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The chronically messy will revel in the anecdotes but may need to skip the terminology." - Booklist.
"The advice is good and the arguments intriguing, and the book will probably be widely cited by those who have always resented neatniks. Too bad it's, well, such a mess." - PW.

This information about A Perfect Mess was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Reader Reviews

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Rolf Smith

The offices in my life
A powerful sanity check. I have always worked in piles, not files. I have always had an office that became a Perfect Mess. If things go into files they are gone for me, they become historical only. With limited exceptions for Really Important Stuff. I have used 3-ring binders and bookcases as files for years. Microsoft and Outlook have taken the place of my binders and my "piles" now go whereever I go, but I still revert to Hard Copy paper for serious work. And I have never had difficulty finding anything in the Mess... unless someone crept in an "helped" me organize the place. This book gave me a number of insights into myself, tips on the value of my "messy" system, and how to leverage it. I am vindicated!

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