Yesterday, I cracked. I couldn't find my new appointment book -- the one I bought last week, where I carefully wrote down all my secret passwords, my nephews' birthdays, vital phone numbers, everything I'm supposed to do in 2007, and who I'm having lunch with on Monday.
I know it's around here somewhere. But where? My desktop is a testament to my extraordinarily untidy life. Judging by the lowest layer of stuff on it, it was last excavated in 2003. Perhaps my new appointment book wound up in one of the overstuffed manila folders marked "urgent" or "good ideas" or "follow up." Maybe it's mixed in with the notes I took three years ago in China. It could have fallen on the floor into the pile of books I plan to sort and give away. (Several biographies of Paul Martin are available on request.)
I know it can't be in the drawers, because the drawers are already full. They have letters that people wrote me through the years that I plan to answer. They have a broken tape recorder, some pantyhose, old expense receipts (now, alas, unclaimable), user manuals for extinct computers, toothpaste, winter boots, and a cup of fat-free strawberry yogurt that says best before: May 22.
I am ashamed of my desk. I waste a lot of time looking for things on it. I have always regarded my messy workspace as a sign of my weak character, my lack of discipline, and my innate sloth. I am sure that, if I tidied up, I would be a better person. Every January, I resolve to do this, and throw a few things out, and every February my desk is pretty much back to the way it was before.
So you can imagine my relief to talk to Eric Abrahamson, an advocate of mess. "Tidiness is highly overrated," he told me. "And messiness has a lot of virtues."
Prof. Abrahamson, who's in the faculty of management at Columbia University, and co-author David Freedman have written an entire book on the benefits of disorder. It's called A Perfect Mess. In it, you will learn that messy desks are actually efficient. "What you want is for your desk to be optimally messy," says Prof. Abrahamson. "If you spent any more time cleaning it up, it would slow you down, and if you let it get any messier, it would slow you down. What you want is the perfect balance." It's true, he says, that a messy desk is often associated with a creative mind. Einstein was a messy person, too. "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?" Einstein once said. So there.
Messy desks usually go hand in hand with procrastination, another of my flaws. Procrastination is a form of mess in time, not space. But Prof. Abrahamson, of whom I am becoming rather fond, warns that being overly organized is itself a form of procrastination. My kind of procrastination (putting off things I ought to do) is really a disguised form of efficiency. When you put off doing something for long enough, the need for action often goes away. Either the problem resolves itself or you realize it's far too late (as with those thank-you notes you always meant to write). If the need for action doesn't go away, no doubt you will hear about it and get another chance. One day, I guarantee, someone will make sure you pay that parking ticket.
The advent of e-mail has added to my load of guilt. Right now, I have 387 unread e-mails in my inbox, a typical number. There are more e-mails that I have marked with a red flag, meaning that I will read or answer them as soon as I have time. The red flags reassure me that I have my e-mail under control. If only there weren't several hundred of them.
One day, I zapped my entire inbox by mistake. I was horrified that so much crucial information had vanished into the ether. But then I was suffused by a strange, Zen-like calm. I felt lighter, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Since then, I have been guiltily exterminating my messages at random intervals. Think how much time I save by doing that.
There are now billion-dollar industries to make us better organized. I remember when everybody trendy had a Filofax. Now they have a Palm Pilot or a Treo, where they can record their entire schedules and all the scraps of information they will ever need. One friend even had a Palm Pilot that was embedded with some sort of self-improvement program, which was guaranteed to make her more productive and efficient. It took her an entire weekend to program it. It was a classic example of inefficient efficiency. I pointed out to her that it took me a mere 10 minutes to program my new appointment book. But then, of course, I lost it.
How did messiness get such a bad name? Freud had one explanation. Prof. Abrahamson blames Scientific Management, whose premise was that extreme order was necessary to create extreme efficiency. Efficiency, of course, is good. That's why captains of industry are always photographed with immaculately clean desks. It shows they're in control.
I have lots of friends who are very neat. But I'm not sure I'd want to be married to one. Instead, I married my husband, who is even messier than I am. This causes me great grief, and our house frequently reminds me of Dogpatch. But if he were neater than me, who would I have to feel superior to? And if I were married to a neat person, I'd probably have to waste a lot of time tidying up.
I do admit that things sometimes get out of hand. Yesterday, I threw out half the stuff on my desk and still couldn't find my new appointment book. So please do me a favour. If you're having lunch with me on Monday, please give me a call.