Einstein Agrees that Being Messy Fosters Great Thinking!
“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” said Albert Einstein, who is arguably the greatest thinker in the history of thinkers. Allow me to explain how being messy fosters great thinking and unleashes creativity.
According to recent research, Einstein was probably on to something. Recent articles from 99u, the New York Times and Fast Company cite a University of Minnesota study led by Kathleen Vohs that found messy work spaces were often associated with higher levels of creativity and the generation of new ideas.
As a guy who is pretty darn organized, I was excited to learn more about how messiness, clutter and chaos both reflects my thinking style (I collect all sorts of information and connect seemingly un-connectable dots to form cohesive strategies) and my organizational style (my information and resources are always at my fingertips). So it is with great enthusiasm that I champion how home and work messy desks foster my ability to think effectively.
Here’s how it happens.
Serendipitous Discovery!
This is allegedly why Einstein kept his workspace messy, so that – through happenstance – he could accidentally find new ideas by searching for stuff amidst the mess. For example, I came up with an idea for an evidence-based, data-driven handout for university faculty because the report for which I was searching lay beneath two similar handouts and an article about careers beyond the academy for PhDs.
A Mess to Impress
While at first glance my workspace might look a bit chaotic, I know where everything is located. My strategic thinking and organizational abilities are often tested by colleagues and clients who ask me for specific things from my desk, so it builds credibility when I can find such things immediately.
Clarity in Chaos
According to Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman and their book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, people often focus so intently on organizing their lives that we actually become inefficient. By being able to manage my productivity amidst a bit of chaos I save minutes per week, hours per month, and days per year. Abrahamson argues that peoples’ complex filing systems actually see many of us become inefficient because we often lose what we set out to organize within these systems.
All this being said, we need to have workspaces that match how we think and organize. For example, when I pitched the idea for this article to my lovely wife, Michelle, she scrunched up her face and said: “that would absolutely not work for me.” Vohs acknowledges this, too, noting that cleaner and sparser work spaces are associated with healthier lifestyles and more charitable giving. For some folks, messiness just isn’t an option.
For the rest of us, I hope that I have provided other messy-desk-operators with some explainable fodder when the time comes to explain your workspace to supervisors, colleagues and/or clients. And for those of you with clean and sparse workspaces, I hope that this article will expand – and potentially heighten – the opinion of your neighbour’s messy desk.
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Featured image courtesy of Orphan Jones
The two images in the article are of my productively messy workspace