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Slobs Found To Be More Productive Than Neatniks
writertype writes "Are you a slob? Do you pile papers on top of folders on top of game boxes? Here's the thing that those anal neat people can't even conceive of: you're more productive than they are. That's the conclusion of "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder," by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, a new book that argues neatness is overrated, costs money, wastes time and quashes creativity."
time being spent on the upkeep of said neatness:
"People who are really, really neat, between what it takes to be really neat at the office and at home, typically will spend anywhere from an hour to four hours a day just organizing and neatening," he said.
Why not automate your neatness instead? I am a very messy person, which is actually one reason I like my mac. iTunes automatically organizes my music collection in a very accessible manner, with a few rules applied to mail I can quickly organize all my email messages, with expose I can find the window I need with the touch of a button(since I tend to leave too many open), and with spotlight I can quickly find the version of my resume I want to use with just a few terms. I am much more productive because I can be neat without having to slave over it. Time saving and neatness aren't mutually exclusive.
Monstar L
My desk is covered by a six inch high mound of papers, optical discs and spare kit (no food, contrary to the accusations of other people), but I can find anything I want in that pile in under 15 seconds. The only thing that actually messes me up is when co-workers put things on my desk and don't tell me. I have an in-box on my door for that, but they like to stick things on my desk anyway, just so it can be my fault when I don't know about some new item.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I've noticed this before. A colleague of mine tidies twice every day, at least 15 minutes in total. Everything must be neat and tidy and filed when he leaves his desk, even at lunchtime. He belives this makes him more productive and has said so to me.
I tidy once per month. It may take me 2 hours to do. He's spent 7.5 hours tidying. I've spent 2... I guess that the extra 5.5 hours I get to put in are somehow ignored.
As long as no one else starts interfering with my desk then I can find everything I need as a messy desk automatically sorts itself by usefulness order. If I use something a lot then it's towards the front of my desk. The less I use something the more it migrates to the back.
Much of the time I end up working more slowly just after a tidy as I have to start fetching things back from files. The tidying processes main purpose is as a filter. If an item no longer needs to be on my desk (older paperwork ect) it will not return unlike the regular files which will have reappeared on my desk by the end of the week.
I completely agree. Everyone has their own system. People with messy desks don't just shove stuff anywhere. They put it where they will find it again.
This has all been discussed before in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
America, Home of the Brave.
But I can't count the number of times that either being more of a neatnik about something has saved me a huge headache or if I had been more organized how much of a headache I could have avoided.
Yes, if everything goes well then NOT taking the time to follow proper procedures will save you loads of time. However, proper procedures are there because when things go wrong (and they always do) you save more than just time. While the study may try to account for the time saved by being neat as not overcoming the time lost, a straight time-to-time comparison just doesn't cut it. For example, on Project A the Project Manager ensures that everyone follows a strict quality assurance plan. On Project B they let everyone handle their own quality and just trust that it is happening. Project A takes two weeks longer to deliver than originally anticipated because of some random occurence. Project B was affected by the same random occurence but launched early because they didn't go through a quality assurance process. Client suddenly realizes that Project B only half works and fumes but there's time to fix it. Project B then launches on-time (instead of early) after fixes. Even assuming Project B doesn't require additional fixes, Project A is better off because the client received a quality product the first time.
And furthermore, saying neat squashes creativity is the true slobs excuse for not trying. If your creative process is so fragile that it requires things to be cluttered all over the place, you're creative value is NILL.
Anyway, I doubt there will be too many people here who agree with this study, though there can certainly be cases where neatness is taken too far.
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. In my experience, being a bit messy can improve productivity by shunting unimportant tasks away from your center of attention. For example, if I receive a bunch of fluff memos, they're going in the kill-file pile until I get around to reading them in detail. (Which may never happen.) But I haven't disposed of them yet, so I can still retrieve them if necessary.
I agree with most everything said, but to add my 2 cents, I believe that moderate messyness is good because it works like a cache and a priority queue.
If I am a neat freak and put everything away, then its a waste of time to continually get and put away what I'm working with. Think of this like a cache.
Now for the priority queue, when I'm a little messy, the important stuff floats to the top. As the mess gets higher and deeper, after a while the stuff on the bottom becomes unimportant, and can then be cleaned up (similar to garbage collection).
The problem is that if you let the mess grow too large, it *WILL* impact your ability to operate efficiently. So every once in a while you need to do a house cleaning of your different paper stacks, your email, your desktop files, and whatever other info you use on a regular basis.
So true. Again with my computer analogy, this is when you have TLB misses, or cache misses, or you are thrashing your swap. All of those things are OK if its not a chronic problem, but if it is a chronic problem, well then, its a chronic problem.
This is probably the most insightful post on the topic so far. The key to productiviy is that the producer must be able to catalog the information for efficient retrieval. Filing cabinets and stacks and folders are all very good storge methods for retrieval, especially when there is more than one individual involved. But for an individual project, someone who can remember where everything is in a "mess" by using their own mental filing index can be just as efficient, and moreso if the retrieval of the information takes less time than waliking to a defined filing area.
The danger of this is that you are zero fault tolerant - one bus (or lottery ticket, for you optimists) is all it takes to cause a significant setback in the project schedule. It also reduces parallelism on projects which require the coordination of many people who must access the information on a regular basis.
I am, admitedly, a piler, and I have a very large desk (3'x8' plus a 3'x4' section for the computer) but I find that beyond a certain level of randomness I lose efficiency. I keep things out so I don't forget about them, but it make it very difficult for the others in my office to find things. I have to let my efficiency suffer a small amount by filing things, but the overall productivity of the office increases when I do so.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The secretary at a small doctors office I use to go to had a simple, disorginized and ingenously effective method of ordering her files on pacients. She kept all the pacient's files in a singe file. Whenever a paicent came in, she would search through the file for that pacient's chart, find it and give it to the doctor. When she recieved it back from the doctor she put it in the front. If you think of the worst case search time (the "Big O"), it was terrible(O(n) ), she might have to search through every single file to get to the one she wanted. But the avrage search time was very fast. Why? Because chances were very good that the file she was looking for was at the front of the file. Most of the time the same pacients came in over and over again, and their files stayed at the fron, making them easy to find. I only came in once a year, and my file was at the back, it took her a long time to find mine, but had to do it very infrequently, and she didn't have to search past mine to get to the files of her frequent visitors. This is a simple method of storing data, that requires a minimum of effort to maintain but is effective if certin critera are met: 1) Some things are used more frequently than others, and 2) the total number of things is not too large.
Now consider the stack of papers on a slobs desk. Whenever he needs something in it, he searches through his pile. When he finds and finishes with it, what does he do? He's lazy so he just throws it on the top of the pile.
Just something to think about...
If it's dead, you killed it.
I find that going to these messier mechanics, computer shops, and what-have-you also keeps me more productive. Getting an oil change at a BrakeMax requires that I bring reading material and a snack, even with an appointment. I can call Bill's (filthy) Garage and drop by later this afternoon and get it done in fifteen minutes, filters changed and all. Similar experience applies to barbershops, computer/electronics shops, and the like. And yes, most people would regard my home workspace as a deplorable mess.
In other words, and say it slowly with me, "Correlation does NOT equal causation."
While I am glad that more people seam to understand this concept, most people take it to an extreme. While a correlation does not equal causation, correlations are not useless. Almost everything we as humans know about anything started with a correlation. Finding correlations is what leads us to causational relationships.
Finding a correlation in research is the first important step. They should not be ignored, or denounced simply because they are "only" correlations. These correlations should be used to warrant further research to find out what the cause of the correlations are.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Sounds sorta like a caching algorithm. As items are used, they are left on top. Temporal locality says that all the important items will be on top of the other items.
But then we get a garbage collection algorithm, too. Every so often, the short-lived objects which are no longer important are removed in your tidying process.
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Actually, 20 years ago they figured out highly intelligent "anal retentive" people (i.e. intelligent perfectionists) were frequently slobs precisely because they could look at a huge mess and instantly understand everything that needed to be done, and be all at once overwhelmed by the magnitude of it, and just not bother.
Whereas, presumably, stupider people, perfectionist or otherwise, would just get started and take a break or give up for a few days after awhile.
This is why video games are so insideuos -- it lets people of normal behavior ape that of intelligent perfectionists -- getting all the positive, "you're special" strokes of accomplishment while not actually accomplishing anything of value.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actually, it's more of a Most Recently Used sort. The more recent the item, the more likely it is to be at the top of the pile. Which gives a best-case search time of O(1) and a worst-case search time of O(n). Average search time is application dependent, but it's usually quite good.
Another algorithm that I love using is Generational Garbage Collection. Unimportant stuff that I've downloaded or have created quickly gets placed in a temporary folder. If it grows to a reasonable level of importance, I move it somewhere else. The remaining junk is then flushed on occasion by deleting the entire contents of the temp directory. Very fast and tidy.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It might not be about saving time = more productivity. It might be that people of such a mind are just better workers because they're smarter.
For example, their minds might not view trivialities such as a clean desk as being important.
It's been decades since psychologists noted highly intelligent people tended to disdain rules as being set up for the common man.
Higner intelligence --> more clutter and, coincidentally, more productive, better work.
But it would require higher intelligence to see that link, rather than just presuming some first-order connection between clutter and doing a better job.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Blinky's desk is a heap. Ask him to find a post-it, it's right on top. Ask him to find a functional spec from six months ago, he's got to sift through everything. After he uses them he leaves them on top of the desk.
Pinky's desk is totally neat. Ask him to find a post-it, he opens the drawer for "P", does binary search, then finds the post-it. Ask him to find a functional spec from six months ago, that's under "F", same thing. After he uses them, he puts them both away, same procedure. If he's got to refer to the spec ten times, he finds it and puts it away ten times.
Inky's desk has a heap on top but the drawers are sorted. He can find a post-it as fast as Blinky and the spec from six months ago as fast as Pinky. When he's done he leaves the post-it on top of the desk and puts the spec back in its proper place. Though the second time he has to refer to the spec, he leaves it on his desk. Every few months he finds his heap is slow, so he puts everything that he hasn't used in the last week away in the proper drawer.
My wife is a neatnik. She always likes things in order.
:)
However, she is the most productive worker in her department... as long as her desk stays organized.
If things get slightly out of order, it takes her several hours to get things back the way she wants it, and occasionally she feels that her design isn't 100% efficient, so she'll reorganize. Once she's satisfied, she switches into high speed and rarely makes mistakes.
At home, her desk is a mess. Go figure
I agree whole heartedly. Though I would like to make one point: While the Boeing repair shops may be kept spotless and clean, the amount of activity going on does create a similar impression of a "mess" to an outside observer. The variety of tool carts, diagnostic machines, loose diagrams, and people flowing every which way belies the true order sitting in the middle of the chaos.
It's effectively the same as the mechanic down the street. The primary difference is that the mechanic down the street uses his own mind as his organizational system, while the larger operations of Boeing require that organizational information be kept in easily accessible files external to any one person. In both cases, the most effective solution has been chosen for the work being done.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No, that isn't it either. Technically, if the mind's organization system is internally random, then it does not matter if it is interacting with a system that is random or ordered, because it sees both as random. An ordered system cannot be any better or worse than a random one. (*)
The real truth is that a messy desk is actually a vertical FIFO sort -- most recently used thing on top. Now I myself am a very organized person, but I also know that FIFO sort is basically the most productive organization strategy for human-scale things. For example, in the front 3 inches of my filing cabinet I keep folders for about 95% of the paperwork that I need to deal with on a semi-regular basis. The only difference is that I decided these papers don't need to be scattered over a broad flat surface in order to be easy to find. I've also found that if I keep those same file folders in a more "proper" place, e.g. alphabetized, etc, then I simply won't file away papers because it takes too much effort and a big mess results. By the way, all productivity experts know about the FIFO system and recommend it (e.g. David Allen).
Finally in TFA they estimate people spend 1-4 hours per day cleaning (including home life), which is basically a
highly pathological case, at best. Someone who spends that much time cleaning is either OCD or a janitor.
* In some creative processes it is advantageous to have a random and independent sampling strategy over the materials you are working with. But people tends to processing things in linear order, so independence is violated when going through a sorted pile. Thus certain types of things are good (and fun) to have disorganized, like art supplies. However, I would argue that for most "productive" people, creativity and random-association isn't a big part of their job.