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articles - books - links.......
articles - books - links
ARTICLES
Interested in new trends and future. Check out interviews with Watts Wacker - top futurist. MORE...
Check another futurist Ray Kurzweil - how technology is shaping our life.
BOOKS
Blink- thinking without thinking by Malcolm Gladwell gladwell.com/blink/
Although two years old now it is still a good read. Find out how we make intuitive decisions by thin-slicing reality.
Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard amazone.co.uk
Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories and dreams. One of the best books on virtual feng shui. Classic - a book not to photoread.
Lucid dreaming is the next stage in human consciousness development. Learn this key skill for actualising your dreams from a free e-book. MORE about lucid dreaming...
A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder-How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
By Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
Weidenfeld & Nelson 2006; ISBN 978-0-297-85204-
A clutter-free environment can cost you. The inefficiency of tidiness. In praise of mess. Why keeping tidy can be bad feng shui. Tidiness and order are so ordinary. The new maximalism means messy home.
This book may not change people’s lives unless they have a tendency towards being messy. Clutter, untidiness and hoarding, are not bad habits, the authors argue, but often more sensible than meticulous planning, storage and purging of possessions.
That is because being tidy is actually more costly. An improvised storage system (important papers close to the keyboard on your desk, the rest haphazardly distributed in loosely related piles on every flat surface possible) takes very little time to manage. Filing every bit of paper in a precise colour-coded categories and a system of cross-referencing, will certainly take longer and will not save time.
The authors of this book search the furthest reaches of psychology, management studies, biology, music and art (art depends on mess; remember Tracy Emin’s messy bed) and physics to show why a bit of disorder is good for you. Mainly, it creates much more room for coincidence and synchronicity. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because he was notoriously untidy, and didn't clean a petri dish, thus allowing fungal spores to get to work on bacteria.
Albert Einstein said, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what then is an empty desk?” And Einstein makes a good role model here not simply because he is so widely accepted as having been highly effective at his job, but also because he might be regarded as a sort of godfather of the science of useful mess. When Robert Fogel, Nobel laureate found his desk becoming massively piled, he simply installed a second desk behind him that now competes in towering clutter with the first. Actually, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why it makes perfect sense to keep a messy desk. Thought and work are unpredictable, varying and ambiguous – they are messy. Why shouldn’t your desk be messy too?
America's professional organisers, a thriving and lucrative cult of tidiness coaches, are merchants of guilt, not productivity boosters. Benjamin Franklin, an early advocate for the highly effective, advised, “Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.” Franklin practised what he preached, assiduously avoiding, for example, the time-wasting habit of interacting with his wife and son for much of his life.
Considering how little evidence the pros lay out to support the claim that being organised is worth the effort, the world seems to put a lot of energy into fretting about being messy. People tend to worry about cluttered homes too much and often for no good reason (unless they’re into feng shui rigid rules). Mess is often in the eye of the beholder. The key insight of the book is that disorganisation is a human condition. Also messiness according to the book can confer six key benefits: flexibility, completeness, resonance, invention, efficiency and robustness. To reap the benefits try being a little messier in some way, and see if there’s an improvement in the above qualities. If there is, try a little more.
The book has two weaknesses. Firstly, it overstates the case for tidiness in some environments—surgery, a dinner table or income tax returns—is really overwhelming. Secondly, the book is a bit repetitive and disorganised. Even readers who love mess in their own lives don't necessarily like it in others.
The book doesn’t mention feng shui but it reminded me of a story Bill Spear once told us. He was looking for a best Chinese restaurant in a particular area and thought that if he could walk behind all the restaurants and look at the kitchens this would help him to decide where to eat. After careful inspection he found one where the kitchen was very orderly, everyone was focused and working in harmony – he went there to have a dinner and it was the worst Chinese he has ever had!
One useful tip I picked up from the book: the most important organising tool for your home is a magnet! In seconds it will convert your fridge into a messy, invaluable repository of photographs, important bills, shopping lists, stamps, business cards, paper cuttings, etc.
This book has the potential to free you (and consequently some of your clients), from the myth that clutter is bad feng shui and restore the yin and yang balance and common sense in the world of order. It is a must for every feng shui consultant.
Reviewed by Jan Cisek
USEFUL LINKS
Natural Health Information mercola.com
EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique / tapping
emofree.com
New Scientist newscientist.com/home.ns
VIP - Speed reading, PhotoReading Courses in London & the UK photoreading.co.uk
Jeannie Tower - feng shui consultant, bau-biology resources fengshuimagic.com/
