内容摘要 这个世界的杂乱无章,无法测量、不协调,即兴,缺憾,不连贯,粗糙,凌乱,随意,模棱两可,暧昧不明,麻烦,变化多端,甚至肮脏……它们,也是这个世界的一部分。 人们总是喜欢整齐,总觉得有序比混乱好,总是从有序中获得好处,却忽略了无序带给我们的益处。作者认为,有序、整齐意味着过分僵硬、脆弱和无创意。这本书揭示了响应能力、应变能力和创造力比以往更大的价值,这些价值与无序有着很多内在联系,甚至可以说正是来自无序和混乱。作者的理论对个人和企业寻求创意前沿有许多潜在的益处,对社会的发展影响深远。 照本宣科的演讲只会让现场听众昏昏欲睡; 遭遇到鲁莽的对手,再谨慎的指挥官也会不知所措; 偶然的分神可能就在不经意间给作家带来灵感; 为了达到量化目标,人们反而会制定有悖常理的激励措施; 整洁的办公室让员工感到无奈和厌倦; 唱反调的人貌似偏离了团队和谐,其实独具慧眼; 最后完成更多工作的,是不整理收件箱的那个员工; 当我们对在线问卷视而不见时,反而找到了灵魂伴侣; 不少人认为抗干扰能力弱是一个缺点,但事实上,这部分人恰恰具有更强的创造力。 The urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away. We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness. The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.
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