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Anthony D'Ambrosio
A messy desks may lead to clearer, more organized thinking, a new study shows
Attention bosses who harass employees to clean up their cluttered cubicles: As it turns out, messy desks may lead to clearer, more organized thinking, a new study shows.
And this effect may not just be limited to the worker with the messy desk. The study results suggest that the mess-effect may impact all those sitting near the clutter, says Jia Liu, a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Conventional wisdom is that a messy desk leads to a messy mind, Liu says. But sometimes the mess sparks a desire for simplicity, making people to think in a more organized fashion, she adds.
Liu and her colleagues ran a series of experiments to determine how people react to clutter, according to the report published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
In one experiment, 49 college students were asked to sit at a cluttered cubicle, a tidy cubicle, or one that was in-between.
After sitting at the desk, the volunteers were asked to rate on a scale of one to nine how well a series of statements fit them: “It upsets me to go into complicated situations,” “I would like to simplify my life as much as I can,” “I would like to keep things simple,” and “I am bothered by complicated things.”
Next the volunteers were given a test in which they needed to sort 33 products into groups – the volunteers had to come up with an organizing principle themselves.
When the results were in, it was clear that people sitting at messy desks came up with much simpler organizing principles. They were also the ones who scored high on questions like, “I would like to simplify my life as much as I can.”
Liu and her colleagues concluded: “Opposite to conventional wisdom, we found that participants working at a messy desk displayed simpler cognitions. This is because messiness induces a need for simplicity.”
The study suggests that someone else’s mess might do just as well to spark a need for simplicity. “Other people’s messy desks may indeed help us to organize things simply, as in our experiment the mess was not generated by the participants,” Liu says. “They were placed in a messy environment.”
Does that mean bosses should maybe encourage employees to be messy?
Not so fast, Liu says.
“We’d be careful with making recommendations,” she explained. “One reason is that simplification is not always desirable. In addition, we suspect that extreme mess certainly impairs efficiency.”
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It's not clutter. It's a unique filing system! A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind!
You know what they say: A messy desk is the sign of a messy mind & an empty desk is the sign of ..........
I definitely don't have a sick mind.
I obviously work with some the the most organized people on the planet :(
If I clean up everything and put it away...I can't find it when I'm looking for it! Out of sight out of mind.
Once again, corporate media tells us down is up: 49 "students" who've never worked in a real desk job stand in for reality and imply "simplicity" in this context is indicative of a more orderly thought process. Fear of "complication" here is more the justification of a slob, rather than a measured decision to perform real organization. Clogging a work product's process does not streamline output.
I suggest Ms. Carroll clean up her cubicle and become more productive as a consequence. There is no excuse for sloth, even in semi-professional article generation such as this. In my lexicon, lazy still equals dumb.
Perhaps she could be reassigned to keep us up to date on the Casey Anthony bowel movements, etc., MSNBC seems so sure we need to know more about.
I read an article years ago where several bosses were asked to rate their employee's productivity. The researches then compared that with the employee's work style. Probably amazing to some, there was no correlation between how cluttered/organized an employees desk was with productivity. In fact, some of the people who had the lowest productivity ratings were the most highly organized. It's just a matter of priorities, being organized or being productive.
And just to show how fickle the human mind is, the bosses said, in direct contrast to their ratings, that they considered a person whose office was organized to be more productive than a person whose office was cluttered.
And here I sit in my somewhat messy office looking at a circa 2004 photo of Steve Jobs in his messy basement home office, while remembering the Bill Gates interview from many years ago where the reporter noted piles on his desk, piles on his credenza, and piles on the floor. The reporter asked about the piles and Bill Gates responded it was the only way he could keep up with the large number of projects he had people working on. Sometimes clutter is caused by too many things needing nudges to move along, and if they get files away, they're out of sight, out of mind! People with clean desks need more work assigned to them and more responsibility!
No go Joe. You mistake a clean desk with an organized workspace. Anyone can "file" things in a drawer and forget about them. That's not organized. That's avoidance.
I put things away, but I make sure I have any to-dos associated with any item documented before I put it away. I still may have 100 things to do; I just don't feel the desire to shock and awe myself and anyone else by erecting paper monuments to each task.
Mind Bending!
That is probably true most of the time Nicky Tesla. However, I have also seen those who think that keeping their work space clean is more important than doing the job. Compulsiveness is not good either.
Pure BS. I've been in the workforce for almost 30 years, and every single slob I've worked with was disorganized, could not meet deadlines, could not find anything, could not remember what they did yesterday (work-related, anyway) and caused everyone else more work. What a stupid study. Of course if you put a normal person in the middle of a huge mess, they're going to express the need for simplicity!
This is a useless article - it shows how a person reacts to a mess, which is of mild significance, but entirely ignores the productivity (or lack thereof) of a person who creates a messy work environment. So you stick a neat person in someone elses messy office to help productivity? good luck with that!
This seems like a completely pointless study. If anything, it shows the power of suggestion. You ask questions related to "simplification", and there is a subconscious understanding that is what the task is about. Those in the messier might respond to this suggest more strongly in the subsequent task by coming up with something "simply" to order items by.
My desk is messy as a result of my lack of organization. But my productivity is the same whether I'm in a messy or neat desk. Except that if I'm in a neat desk, it will "tend toward disorder". :)
A messy desk is a sign of an efficient worker. It's not worth it to put things away only to have to take them out again next morning.
I respect a mess cubicle.
I find it interesting the number of people who, when confronted with scientific study results, cry bull$*!#. It's tough being a scientist any more.
I call it "organized chaos". If I clean up my desk, I have no clue where anything is...
My work area tends to get messy... however I usually know right where everything is and have areas that are clear works-in-progress and other categories. I consider myself rather efficient and organized... and in line with what many people have hinted at... I always felt guilty about wasting time to bother "cleaning my cube..." sometimes taking a good while to do... when the time could be spent on work. A job needs to get done... this is "better cubes and gardens."
Many of "the good ones" I know tend to be in the same boat. Messy desks, cubes, offices... they usually collapse into this state rather quickly after "cleaning..." People are busy doing work... who cares about the filing system. In some situations where the information and work areas need to be organized/shared by/with others... I can see this... like a lab, a morgue, a workshop, government files etc... other than that... the cube tends to be an extension of a notebook where... you are eventually going to write things all over the place.
For me, it all comes down to the fact that different people have different thought patterns, and that's nothing new. People who are more "creative" types seem to need more clutter around to spark ideas and help them see connections among disparate items and concepts. People who think more linearly get distracted by clutter and need tidier desks to function optimally. From a manager's perspective, the only thing that should matter is whether someone is productive, not whether their workspace is tidy or cluttered. And if a manager is judging someone's productivity simply from their workspace, that manager needs a new, more objective, set of performance metrics.
I don't appreciate the mess from my co-workers on their desks, especially when rotting food is left among the mess. It gives me a headache and is an assault on the eyes, as well as the nose. Everyone thinks it's disgusting and people walking by will say "if her desk is that filthy, I don't want to know how filthy her house is". Yes, I realize that you can be messy yet clean, but these people tend to suffer from both problems on the most part.
By the way, these are the same people who tell me "hey, if you don't want to be given work to do or get asked to help out on a project, do what I do, pile my desk high with papers and make yourself look busy" and these are also the same people who cannot find a trial paper among their mess for the life of them, so I don't buy that whole "messy desk = busier, hard-working" nonsense. It may be true in some cases, but in others, it's just an act to appear busy and causes unnecessary stress to others who may be blamed for the missing paper when in fact, the papers are sitting in one of those unsightly stacks of paper.
I have a very simple filing system... chronological. The oldest crap is on the bottom.
I am biased in this case for sure, but I think what the reporter read into this study is WRONG. As an organized person, I can confirm that if you place me in the middle of a mess, yes, of course I want to organize said mess or the first thing I can get my hands on. That isn't the same as creating a mess, working in it constantly, and somehow being more organized as a result.
Sometimes a conclusion is counter-intuitive for a good reason.
My co-workers reasoned that the most creative, intelligent people had messy desks. Then we had a mouse problem. This "study" is another reason to continue with the biohazard method.
We're not talking about "filth," we're talking about clutter. Everyone processes information in a different manner - as long as you get the job done, what is the big deal?
Goo-Ru: I like your system--think I'll try it!
I gree with Nick--if I took the time to keep my office neat, I'd never get any real work done. (Just like, if I read all these comments. But a coworker forwarded the article to me; I wonder what that means!!)
A cluttered cubicle may make you more organized but it could also win you an upgrade to your work space or a $200 consolation prize in a video contest going on right now. Check out www.contestfactory.com/pmc to look at the videos or upload your own by 1/30. There are some hilarious videos on there that are worth a look, vote for me if you go!