For the first point, it’s absolutely true that order is required to comprehend and deal with life. No one, including the book, suggests that order is inherently bad, they simply point out that order has a cost that is not often consider.

Again, consider the amount of time that Monk spends ordering his home rather than the many other productive things that could be done with his time. Most are not Monk, but still try to impose ordering systems that waste time.

Finally, consider people that decide to measure metrics, but they have no idea what to do when the metric reading goes high or low. Or imagine a process whose cost of following exceeds the things that might be missed if it wasn’t.

The better book on this topic is “Everything is Miscellaneous” which will show up on this blog soon.

Your second point does not provide any example of the benefits of mess. Ordering by artist versus ordering by topic are choices between ways to order things for most effective use. The mess is having your CDs everywhere, under things, on top of things, in various players. I’m trying to see the value of the mess.

To show how disordered my mind really is I’ll now address your first point. Ordering systems can be abused. True. Ordering may become obsolete in some contexts (electronic where you have desktop search), but ordering makes a lot of sense in some contexts. This is especially true outside of personal productivity. For example, would you hire the lawyer who cannot keep track of the court documents from your last murder trial? Ordering should not be done for its own sake, but with specific goals in mind. I know, for example, when I give Page an action item that the puppy will be tracked to closure. When I give it to you, I say my prayers. *smile*

Don