Disorder was my chronic ailment. Not only my desk and bookshelves but also my closet and sink, even the gallery on my phone, were left unorganized, tangled together in one big lump. Even when I worked at a company, I was always surrounded by stacks of books and materials on the verge of collapse. Things like clean desk campaigns couldn't rehabilitate me.
With randomness as the default, daily life barely held together. Around the time a season ended, I would finally clear out a drawer, or when my computer repeatedly sent warning messages, I would grudgingly buy more storage. For me, throwing everything out and moving was far easier than tidying up neatly by category.
The problem was the emotion. The displeasure or anxiety of "I can't control this." Household wiring snarled and exposed in clumps, an adolescent child beyond control, a future I couldn't plan, scattered interests and connections I couldn't string together, words… Even in such chaos, it was a wonder I kept my deadlines, however loosely, and published books periodically.
But long ago, teacher Lee O-ryeong also confessed. "My desk is a mess. But I'm not ashamed of chaos. I like reading books haphazardly, and I enjoy discovering my own cosmos within it."
It was lucky that around this time I met the chaos economist Tim Harford. Reading his book "on the imperfections that make humans human," I shed my long-held misconceptions about disorder, chaos, ambiguity and imperfection, and felt a great sense of liberation.
The book brims with "gemlike moments of chaos" we hadn't known. Why, even amid surging AI automation, humans must never ultimately give up the share of error and skill; why children who plan loosely outperform those with tight plans; how a messy office became Google's source technology for creativity; and further, why bold people who ignore rules and appropriate confusion go on to thrive.
As we live, we actually learn from experience. The world opens kinder new paths to people who are open to randomness, disorder and the unpredictable.
So it was with the interviews I conduct. The more loosely and vaguely I left the boundaries open, the more people would find and share richer truths within the chaos.
Openness that accepts the situation itself without preconceptions was the highest level of a chaos strategy. It struck me that the next paradigm in evolution following the once-trendy "kindness" is "imperfection." If the essence of evolution is that the imperfect survives, that somehow feels more reassuring.
As the world's entropy marches toward a peak amid hegemonic and technology wars, I interviewed the gentle economist Tim Harford, who argues that moderate disorder favors survival.
-Not long ago, a famous Korean novelist said what sets humans apart from AI is "hesitation." In a similar vein, I like the word "waiting." What about you? What do you think is the essence of the "imperfections that make humans human"?
"First, "hesitation" is a wonderful perspective. That feeling of "not knowing" how to proceed in an uncertain world! Large language models (LLMs) rarely show signs of doubt. But I think we should have some doubt. The word I focus on is "listening." Listening is an attitude that acknowledges that "conversation" is never controllable. Sadly, in daily life we expend immense energy trying to control what can't be controlled.
What happens when we set aside the urge to control and listen to what is happening now? The more we act spontaneously and make mistakes, the closer we get to "humanness." The more we pay attention and respond honestly, the more mistakes leap forward charmingly. In any situation, isn't acknowledging imperfection more powerful than merely reciting perfect lines?"
-How does the explosive power of imperfection manifest specifically?
"Let me share an anecdote about pianist Keith Jarrett regarding the power that comes from acknowledging imperfection. Jarrett couldn't refuse a young girl's ardent plea and had to go onstage with a piano far below standard. After accepting the imperfect situation, he played using the midrange as much as possible instead of the screeching treble so the audience would notice less. To make up for the lack of resonance, he hammered out a repetitive bass riff with his left hand.
And something astonishing happened. The audience cheered and raved at his unconventional performance that defied convention. An uncontrollable piano ended up producing one of the most popular live albums in history, "The Köln Concert." Randomness lets us break free from a fixed state."
-In the book, after "The Köln Concert" and Keith Jarrett, you move on to "plane crashes" and a pilot case. It was the most immersive opening. What did you want to say with those contrasting cases?
"While Jarrett is an exemplar of someone who pushed himself continuously to reach an extraordinary technical peak, the pilots of Air France Flight 447 are a case of losing proficiency by relying too much on autopilot. One story ends in triumph, the other in tragedy. It's a stark contrast that gives readers something to ponder.
As I mentioned about listening earlier, the Air France pilots did not "hear" the situation. The alarms blared loudly and urgently, signaling a continuous stall, but they didn't hear or didn't believe the warnings."
-Why couldn't the pilots hear an alarm so loud and clear?
"Automation undermines the ability to listen. With its state-of-the-art navigation system, that aircraft had no crashes at all for 15 years since 1994. Because the system worked almost perfectly, pilots had little chance to practice even basic flying skills. Pilot Bonin also flew 346 hours in the six months before the accident, but only four of those were hands-on flying.
I suspect he didn't know what he had done. With the words, "So what's happening now?" the plane struck the Atlantic Ocean, and all 228 people on board were killed instantly."
Thanks to digital devices, the likelihood of making minor mistakes has fallen, but the likelihood of making big mistakes has actually increased, he said. During the U.S.-Iran war, there was even a horrific incident in which an Iranian girls' school was blown up due to a missile misfire. The message "to err is human; to really mess things up takes a computer" felt heavier than ever.
In general, when algorithms make decisions, people often stop trying to make better judgments—like drivers who trust navigation alone and, without hesitation, drive into the sea. That's why we need a contrarian approach. Tim Harford cited an intersection where applying the "magic of chaos" reduced accident risk.
The Netherlands' "Squareabout" plaza, designed with the belief that "uncertainty creates safety." There are no crosswalks, traffic signs or lights there.
-I've always been amazed seeing intersections with heavy traffic and no lights that still work well. What is "useful confusion"?
"It's a stimulus that helps people find their own way. In the deliberately ambiguous design of the Squareabout, drivers can't just sit there blankly as if in Autonomous Driving cars. Chaos makes them focus, navigate complexity on their own and watch out for others. That's the benefit of confusion.
In fact, traffic at the Squareabout is very smooth. Cars glide out of the intersection at low speed, and crashes have been cut in half compared with when lights are present. Precisely because it feels like there are too many risk factors, it becomes a safer intersection."
-May I call you a "chaos economist"? While lamenting the difficulties of raising adolescents, I shared your teachings with parents and introduced you as a "master of chaos economics."
"Oh! I like the phrase "chaos economist"! I also have three children. If there's a lesson I've learned as a parent, it's that we can help our kids, but we can't control their fate. Children must make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons—even if watching that is quite painful.
The "disempowered office" research I described in the book was also heavily influenced by my parenting. Do you know the experiment's lesson? It's that how a workspace looks and how tidy it is matters very little. Whether adults or kids, the key is that people intensely dislike having their "autonomy" taken away. My kids' rooms are pretty messy… well, they're their rooms after all."
-I'll confess my room is no better. My desk is piled with materials and mail, and my email is on the verge of exploding. I was genuinely comforted when you said there's a practical system at work even in that disorder.
"It's true. Many scholars have studied the efficiency of "organizing" versus "piling." One side categorizes and tidies, the other just piles. The result: the piling side processed work much faster. The reason is that categorization itself is imperfect, so over time it becomes harder to classify and to find.
When you look closely, even a messy desk runs a practical system that puts the useful stuff on top. Email too—rather than filing into folders, dumping it into "archive" and searching by keywords is much faster. There are so many people who thank me for their crammed inboxes or messy desks. It's astonishing. Many of them were respected CEOs with elite backgrounds and high salaries."
-I suppose your line "it's okay to make a mess" felt liberating?
"If making a mess were truly a problem, they wouldn't even have succeeded. We humans are imperfect and messy beings. That's why we feel excessive guilt about disorder. Even Benjamin Franklin, one of the most remarkable figures in human history, disliked tidying up.
Until he died, he reproached himself, thinking if only he had kept things tidy, he would have been more respected, more successful and more productive. That's a huge misconception. For the record, my email inbox is clean, but my desk is a mess!"
-The correlation between planning and grades was unexpected.
"Students who planned by the month kept improving their grades, but those who planned by the day saw their academic achievement decline over time. Students who didn't plan stayed flat. What's the cause?
If you plan every day, too much time and effort go into planning itself. If you fail to study by the schedule every day, your motivation drops further. The schedule is neat, but the world is disorderly. It's not good to rigidify situations with overly tight plans. We need to be flexible."
-What's the true meaning of "getting work done takes priority over organizing"?
"We often use "organizing" or "planning" as a way to avoid doing the work. But if we handle tasks immediately, or decide not to do them at all, we can make astonishing progress. David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" has the two-minute rule.
If it's something you can do in two minutes, don't add it to a neat, pretty to-do list—just do it now!"
-Would you talk about producer Brian Eno, who once threw David Bowie into confusion?
"When David Bowie fell into mannerism, Brian Eno brought a deck of cards called "Oblique Strategies" and urged him to draw at random and execute. The cards contained strange prompts and constraints like "change the role of the instrument" and "twist the skeleton." The cards drove the band members to the brink of madness, but at the end of that extreme chaos, the greatest masterpiece of the '80s, "Low," was born.
Eno delivered "arbitrary shocks" to help musicians break free from trite habits. With intentional interference, he drew out chaos and imperfection. Today, Eno's oblique strategies are used effectively as creativity catalysts. Brian Eno lived as a distractible, ADHD-leaning artist whose interests constantly jumped, but thanks to that he worked across diverse genres and collaborations. "
I was greatly comforted by the idea that being distractible means you're good at the "random leaps" essential to creativity.
-What's the secret of people who keep getting smarter?
"Intellectual openness. They connect new knowledge with knowledge and become "bridging social capital" themselves. Consider the Hungarian mathematician Erdős. He collaborated more than anyone in the history of science. He worked with more than 500 mathematicians. Beginning collaboration with a new partner means reviewing yet another scientific paper together.
In the 1960s, before the internet, he drifted from the homes of mathematicians in the East and West, living as a human hub ferrying insights in set theory, number theory and more from around the world. The way of the genius wanderer Erdős can also be called a kind of "random leapfrogging strategy."
-Is this also related to the idea that diversity beats talent?
""Diversity beats talent" means this. If you already have a good knife, it's much better to have a "screwdriver" that's a little less capable than an "extra knife" with better performance. Your toolbox should be filled not with the best knives but with things like a screwdriver, wrench and drill. If you want to improve your tennis, hiring a coach, a nutritionist and a fitness trainer will yield much better results than hiring three capable coaches.
But when companies hire or pro sports teams recruit, they often make mistakes. After picking the "best talent" we can find, we pick someone with the same traits again and again, repeating it. What we truly need are diverse people with different skills and experiences."
A diverse pool, by itself, is an engine of chaos and friction that breaks stereotypes and allows random leaps, but in reality many people complain that while they say they mingle with new people, they keep meeting the same kinds of people.
-The warning that perfect order creates perfect extinction was chilling.
"In nature, disorder is healthy. For example, if you design a forest with neat monocultures for timber production, the trees are destroyed by fungi and invasive species. Cities are the same. Successful cities are dazzling chaos itself. Old and new, dwellings and shops, workplaces mingle, and the rich and poor live intermingled. A moderate state of chaos boosts safety, innovation and resilience.
There are also experiments showing that teams with one unfamiliar student outperform teams of friends at problem-solving. People think that more immigrants will only raise crime rates, but over time cities with intertwined ethnic diversity have flourished much more. A society that pursues only neat order may be convenient for now, but it only grows more fragile."
-Among those unafraid of chaos and disorder, whom would you rank as the strongest? Steve Jobs? Ed Catmull? Eric Schmidt? Jeff Bezos?
"Jeff Bezos was the most intriguing. In Amazon's early days, he fully understood the competitive edge of imperfection. Knowing that lumbering, slow competitors were in pursuit, he often launched new products or services early, without preparation. Products frequently vanished in the distribution process, and the databases often went down. But by keeping things moving, judging on the fly and stirring up massive confusion, he beat his competitors.
Carlsen, the Go player, was also impressive. When playing Carlsen, opponents couldn't perform to their level. His moves were not superb relative to his skill, but each move threw his opponents into confusion. To beat an opponent, you don't need to be perfect. It's enough to rattle them so they can't perform to their level."
-As the world's entropy surges to the extreme with advances in AI and unending wars, we can't help but talk about Trump, a "master of chaos." What do you think about the influence on this world of Silicon Valley power players like Sam Altman and Elon Musk, and someone like Trump?
"It's indeed vexing. Through smartphones and social media, we've removed countless minor inconveniences, but at the same time created very large risks. Not just political risk but also the social risks facing younger generations.
Trump is an interesting case to me. He instinctively knows how to harness chaos to gain power. That may not mean a comfortable world for others, but at least in that chaos it's a world where he becomes the "top dog.""
-As you pulled together the fact that the world exists amid such dazzling chaos and chance, was there a moment when you cried "eureka"?
"The story of Keith Jarrett, which I think is the perfect opening to explain this book's ideas, was in fact buried in the back of the manuscript for a long time. Only when the writing process was nearly over did I realize, "Ah, this needs to go right at the front!""
-Can you tell us about the most valuable period of chaos in your life?
"I remember a moment on stage from my school days. I entered a speech contest where, by rule, the script had to be 15 minutes long and we were allowed only a small cue card. Terrified to speak without a script, I wrote down every word in tiny letters, highlighted by color and practiced intensely.
But despite all that practice, during the contest, in the middle of the speech, I lost my place on that little script I was reading from! I couldn't find the next sentence at all. I couldn't exactly pull out a magnifying glass to search the script. So I just kept talking, making sense as I went. The audience responded far more to the speech when I spoke naturally than when I read the script. I learned a big lesson there."
-Writing a book is also a grueling balancing act between chaos and cosmos. How do you go about it?
"My first book was "The Undercover Economist." I had no idea what I was doing, and it was really hard. I just explored whatever looked interesting, and it became my most successful global bestseller. I think readers like the naive, modest stance of exploration itself.
These days I go hunting for interesting stories. Rather than trying to explain an idea, I follow the story and think about what we can learn from what happened after."
-What are your thoughts on routines?
"If you have routines that work well for you, use them actively. That's a fine approach. But sometimes it's better to boldly break that routine and do something different. I have routines too. I run, I enjoy working out, and I have a regular coffee shop I frequent. But I try to deliberately mix up these habits, so I don't settle into being too comfortable."
-If you look closely, humans like order, but the world defaults to chaos and randomness. That's why everyone tries so hard to make their own patterns and processes. But the stronger the winds of automation, the rarer humanity's labor pattern of "skill through mistakes and repetition" seems to become. So do individual potentials like "deviation, variation and integration." Lastly, can we imperfect humans navigate the age of AI omnipotence well?
"We can neither control nor predict the future. Although it is scary and uncomfortable, it's better to acknowledge this. AI is certainly threatening, but I see many people I respect playing with AI and creating new things. Whatever happens, let's not lose to AI when it comes to "listening and knowing how to enjoy."
Move forward with an optimistic attitude. If we have even a bit of hope that there is music we must play, conversations we must share and messes to make that we still need to create, imperfect humans like us will be able to get through today."