Creative Clutter.
A correlation between clutter and creativity is part of our folklore. (A Google
search on "messy desk" + creativity brings up almost 200,000 hits.)
Someone with a messy desk, in this scenario, isn't your regular slob. He or she
is actually a creative genius with too many interesting ideas and projects filling
his or her head and workspace. Stories abound that claim to show us this correlation,
and these are often joined by stories not only about creativity, but about productivity
as well. If you've got a messy desk, then it's almost a sure bet that you're more
productive than that anal retentive cleanliness freak across the isle.
I don't know when this idea entered our folklore. Though Einstein, for instance,
was known for being sloppy (he probably encouraged this image), I'm not familiar
with any discussion in the literature about his desk. I may be wrong, but I doubt
that Newton was thought to have a messy desk. It's my guess that this is a quite
modern idea. (Though both messiness and absent-mindedness are often seen as qualities
of genius, they're not the same. Norbert Wiener was considered the quintessential
absent-minded professor [my favorite joke about him is here]
but I don't think I've ever read anecdotes about his messiness.)
Perhaps statistics exist on this, but even if they do, they'd tend to be of a
rather self-predictory type. If someone has a messy
desk and is considered to be creative, then that's one point for messiness. On
the other hand, if someone has a messy desk but doesn't have any outstanding creative
qualities, that desk will get left out of whatever study is conducted. Who wastes
time observing the desks of ordinary people, anyway?
The best part about the messy desk myth is that it allows many of us to proudly
view ourselves as creative geniuses just waiting to be discovered. And since there
are many of us in each generation, new articles and books on the subject are continually
being written. The latest of these is A
Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by David H. Freedman and Eric
Abrahamson. And of course, picking up on what's sure to be a rather popular meme,
The New York Times ran an article on the subject - Saying
Yes to Mess.
Freedman and Abrahamson's book isn't, of course, based only on anecdote. There's
also research. An
article in the Canadian paper The Province reports on research of this sort
from 2006:
In the January 2006 study by Cleveland-based PsyMax
Solutions, work styles of hundreds of CEOs and other top executives were analyzed,
revealing that these successful business people were markedly less organized
but also more creative than other professionals.
The study found these high-level execs to score highest in areas of innovation
and risk-taking, and low when it came to order and neatness.
Lifehacker, a site devoted to the admirable motto: Don't live to geek; geek
to live, invited
its readers to give their opinions on the New York Times article and received
over 60 responses. These were rather predictable, if also fun to read. To my mind
one response put things very nicely:
With all the "stuff"
I get in on a daily basis, it's hard to be anything but messy!
Suggesting perhaps, that much more than being creative geniuses, we simply live
in an era where keeping things tidy, both physically and mentally, is simply impossible.
Go to: But you can, you can!