A01=Tracey Potts
actor-network theory
Author_Tracey Potts
Bruno Latour
Buckminster Fuller
burnout
Category=JBCC2
Category=NHTB
Category=VS
clutter
cultural history
decluttering
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_self-help
eq_society-politics
Ford Motor Company
grind culture
Henry Ford
Highly Sensitive Person
house doctors
hustle culture
life coaches
life hacking
Marie Kondo
more-than-human
new materialism
object-oriented ontology
OOO
personal productivity
procrastination
productivity
productivity bloggers
reverse image
rhythm
self-help books
self-optimisation
storage gurus
Product details
- ISBN 9781526194756
- Weight: 396g
- Dimensions: 170 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Neither use nor ornament is a book about personal productivity, narrated from the perspective of its obstacles: clutter and procrastination. It offers a challenge to the self-help promise of a clutter-free life, lived in a permanent state of efficiency and flow.
The book reveals how contemporary projections of the good, productive life rely on images of failure. Riffing on the aphorism ‘less is more’ – a dominant refrain in present day productivity advice – it tells stories about streamlining, efficiency and tidiness over a time period of around 100 years.
By focusing on the shadows of productivity advice, Neither use nor ornament seeks to unravel the moral narratives that hold individuals to account for their inefficiencies and muddles.
Tracey Potts is Honorary Assistant Professor of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham
