Lateral Thinking for Every Day

38

Messy beats tidy

It is claimed that Albert Einstein said, ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’

We are encouraged at home, at school and at work to be tidy and ordered. Many companies have a clean desk policy. But there is much evidence that messy people are more creative and that messy environments can spur the imagination. Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Tony Hsieh and Einstein himself were all renowned for their cluttered desks.

Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman say: ‘Mess isn’t necessarily the absence of order. A messy desk can be a highly effective prioritizing and accessing system. On a messy desk, the more important, urgent work tends to stay close by ...