Why it’s good to be messy
We’re programmed from childhood to tidy our rooms, make our beds, keep our desks and our schoolbags neatly packed.
Tidiness and organisation, we’re told, reflects a calm and organised mind, allowing us to be more efficient, more productive, less stressed.
But is this really the case or, as author of new book Messy: How to be Creative and Resilient in a Tidyminded World Tim Harford argues, can being messy be of far more benefit than we think?
The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile, and sterile. Harford’s approach reveals how qualities like creativity, resilience, and responsiveness can be nourished far more effectively with a bit of mess around, and that messiness lies at the core of how we innovate, how we achieve, how we reach each other, how we succeed.
Harford says his book is ‘‘a celebration of everything we can’t quite tidy up – of creative disorder, unlikely partnerships, improvisation and, of course, messy desks.
‘‘We tend to be tidy-minded about a lot of things, we instinctively like structure and order. That’s all very well if you’re a librarian or bookkeeper, but all too often we try to over-prepare and over-organise in situations where we’d be better off tolerating a little mess.
‘‘A few years ago two psychologists, Alex Haslam and Craig Knight, set up various ‘ideal’ office spaces and invited people to work in them to see how productive and happy they were. It turns out that most people aren’t super minimalists; they like a little decoration in their office – a pot plant, say.
‘‘But the main discovery Haslam and Knight made was that what really matters isn’t how the office looks – it’s who gets to decide it. When people had the power to control their spaces they were happy and productive. When researchers overrode their decisions they felt distracted and resentful.
‘‘The lesson here is that office managers should just let people have more control over their own space, even if that means it gets a bit cluttered.’’
So how does the author of a book celebrating mess feel about Marie Kondo’s bestseller The LifeChanging Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising?
Harford says he’s actually a big fan, and they are in total agreement on one thing: there’s no point trying to organise your way out of an overstuffed situation.
‘‘If you have too much junk in your house then clever filing systems and pegboards won’t really help you. Organisational systems, says Marie Kondo, are a trap. I agree.
‘‘But while Marie Kondo’s radical minimalism works really well for your kitchen or sitting room, it doesn’t automatically carry over to managing a project at work or your email inbox.
‘‘It’s not that it’s wrong – it’s just that it’s not directly relevant. Can you really manage an inbox by keeping only the emails that spark joy? No: we’re talking about a different kind of problem.
‘‘And it’s when you get into these areas of creative collaborative projects with a complex flow of information that I think my embrace of ambiguity, improvisation and, yes, plain old mess, can reap dividends.’’
Harford says researching the book was also a sharp shock to him as a parent.
‘‘I realised I was depriving my children of the power to mess up their bedrooms – and that autonomy was much more important than a space that kept my inner neat-freak happy.’’
Is he then a neat person turned messy or has he always been more on the messy side?
‘‘If you saw my kitchen or my bedroom, you’d say I was a neat person,’’ says Harford. ‘‘But if you saw my desk you’d think it belonged to a different person – it’s piled high with books and papers.
‘‘One of the things I learned writing the book, though, was that there’s a time and place for tidiness and for mess.
‘‘In the kitchen I follow the familiar advice, ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. It works brilliantly for corkscrews and spices.
‘‘But that plausible-sounding advice just doesn’t work for the typical desk of the typical office worker.
‘‘We have paper and digital documents, email and social media all pouring in over our physical and our digital desktop, and we have to make sense of this stuff.
‘‘And it turns out that allowing some documents to pile up physically on your desk is often a more effective approach to sorting it than prematurely labelling it and filing it away before you really understand what it is – or even if you need to keep it at all. ‘Piling’ tends to beat ‘filing’ as a strategy for knowledge workers.
‘‘Fortunately, my wife is like me – she’s tidy in the kitchen and she has a messy desk.
‘‘Our children are, of course, wonderfully messy. But writing the book has helped me to realise that they need their autonomy and space to make a mess. I still make them hang up their coats and clear away their plates, but I don’t make them tidy their rooms unless they ask for help with that.
‘‘The freedom to own your own mess is important.’’
Emotional eating has become very common. Whether it is regularly over-eating, you start eating and you can’t stop, or perhaps you know better but you still eat too much poor quality food.
Maybe it’s the other end of the spectrum and you don’t eat enough. In all of these scenarios it is never about the food. It is an often unconscious strategy attempting to numb emotional pain.
There is a big difference between eating two squares of chocolate and the whole block, between a sweet biscuit with a cup of tea in the evening and half the packet.
Emotional eating is when we eat for non-physiological reasons – we’re not actually hungry. We’re literally feeding our feelings, which may be sadness, anxiety, frustration, or even happiness.
How much of it is stress/ lifestyle inflicted?
When I talk about stress in this context I am not denying that genuine distress and trauma don’t exist – sadly they do. In this context, I am referring to day-today stresses.
These stresses are, at times, our fears undercover. If you follow what stresses you out to the end, you will see that what most people are frightened of is how others see them.
So if you (subconsciously) create meanings across the day that you disappointed someone, or that they think less of you for example, you will try to escape from feeling that in many ways, a common one of which is eating or drinking in a way that doesn’t serve your health.
Be mindful of when you’re eating to alleviate stress or when you’re eating because you’re hungry. Typically, the types of food you want will be the clue here. Not many people crave a big bowl of kale when they are stressed.
What should we reach for in place of food?
We are completely governed by how we feel. Working out how you want to feel and finding non-food related activities or focuses that support that can really help.
It is important to disconnect food from your reward system, and start rewarding yourself with other fulfilling activities.
When you’re not hungry but find yourself peering into the fridge looking for something, try to find comfort in non-food related ways. For example: go for a walk, read a book, observe nature, watch your children sleep, treat yourself to a relaxing bath or massage, talk to a wise friend.
What are healthy snack alternatives?
A nourishing plant-based smoothie, hummus and vegetables sticks, soup, home-cooked leftovers, bliss balls (nuts, seeds, and a small amount of fruit to sweeten), two squares of good quality dark chocolate (preferably 70 per cent).
Additional tips
By eating while you’re experiencing emotions that you find challenging, you are giving food a new significance, beyond just meeting your nutritional needs. Food becomes a coping strategy, making your desire for it intensify.
You begin to believe that you need this food to get through these emotions you are experiencing. Research indicates that eating poor quality, high-sugar foods can affect activity in the parts of your brain that manage stress, further reinforcing a reliance on this as a coping strategy.
When you feel like you want to eat in a way that doesn’t serve you, ask yourself what you really want. Name it or write it down. Yet, it’s not even about having that; it’s about how you perceive having that will make you feel, so identify that.
Then incorporate more activities into your life that allow you to feel the emotions you are looking for the food to help you feel. Be patient and kind with yourself as you explore why you might be emotionally eating.
Dr Libby has a new range of food-based nutritional supplements. Visit bioblends.co.nz for more information. See drlibby.com for her blog.
Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, best-selling author and speaker. The advice contained in this column is not intended to be a substitute for direct, personalised advice from a health professional.