how neat is too neat?
Monday, March 8, 2010 at 5:29PM I admit it. I'm a bit of a neat freak. Apparently, this is not good news. Sigh. Another virtue deconstructed...
According to a study by Eric Abrahamson, professor of management at Columbia Business School, and writer David Freedman,
moderately disorganised people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, resilient, more creative, and generally more effective than highly organised ones
This is truly news to me. But here's the real shocker -
These two authors surveyed real office workers and found that
people with very neat desks spent 36 per cent more time on organising and searching than people with fairly messy ones. This is probably because an apparently messy desk reflects some intuitive organising principle inside its user's mind.
Great. There goes all scientific justification for the time I spend keeping my desk neat. But what if my intuitive organizing principle is manifested in the act of tidying my desk. What then, huh, huh?
Why can't I be both virtuous (as in, neat) and intuitive. Didn't think of that one, did they? I should stop before this gets messy...
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