Is your workspace an obstacle?
In my case, it seems like a full-blown obstacle course.
My desk itself is fairly clean, but to either side of it … piles of papers and magazines, scattered boxes, all manner of unsorted odds and ends … it’s a disaster.
And, I fear it’s hurting my business …
So I decided to do some research.
Links Between Clean Workspaces and Performance
Did you know that paper clutter is the #1 problem for most businesses, according to the National Association of Professional Organizations?
Did you know that the average person wastes 4.3 hours per week searching for papers?
Did you know that mishandled paperwork is the biggest cause of small businesses failing to properly service customers, according to the Small Business Administration?
Let’s see … paper clutter … check.
Wasting several hours per week looking for documents and papers … check.
Mishandling paperwork … no, but there are definite problems in my filing system — like not being able to open the filing cabinet because there’s clutter in the way. We’ll call it a “check” on principle.
So on the surface, it seems, my fears were justified. This messy work environment is a bigger problem than I thought.
Or is it?
I dug a little deeper …
Links Between Clutter and Performance
Imagine my surprise to find recent studies indicating that the opposite, in fact, may be true. That a cluttered desk might, in fact, stimulate creativity and improve efficiency?
There’s even a link between cluttered desks and better decision-making! Who would’ve thought? It seems that although corporations prefer clean, modern looks in their workspaces, the Feng-Shui style approach is not for everyone.
In particular, creative and visionary types of people are far more likely to operate with cluttered desks. Like who, you might ask? Like Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, and Mark Twain, to name a few.
Einstein even made the famous quote: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
And here’s a more direct observation from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku: “It’s pointless to have a nice clean desk, because it means you’re not doing anything.”
Even in the corporate world, a messy desk can be an active sign of leadership: “If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.” That’s from Harold Geneen, who was President and CEO of ITT for almost two decades.
Finding Your Comfort Zone
The answer, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. It should seem pretty obvious that different people interact differently with their environment.
Some people simply can’t stand clutter. Being surrounded by it causes inordinate amounts of stress. A cluttered desk can actively keep them from focusing by diffusing their concentration. It also creates what is, for them, a high priority task that may supersede other, more productive work.
For those who gravitate toward cluttered environments, however, the effects are much different. For them, the clutter represents a universe of stimuli that is always close at hand. They may even need those stimuli to do their best work. In their minds, cleaning up the clutter is not only a waste of time that could be spent more productively, but is actually counterproductive to their performance.
So, with scientific studies supporting both sides of the coin, it really becomes a matter of choice: clutter … or no clutter?
For myself, I’ve always struggled to keep a clean desk. Even in grade school, my desks and lockers were famously untidy (and the tradition lives on, by the way … my daughter found a pair of shoes that had been missing for months when she emptied her locker last year).
Through all these years, though, I assumed it was a bad habit — like laziness — that kept me from cleaning my workspace. Maybe it was something more.
As I look around me now, I have a much different view of my environment than when I started writing this. I see lots of color and stimuli around me. I see a vast array of resources and subjects at my fingertips, which I could reach without ever leaving my chair. And that’s without even considering the Internet, of course. Interestingly, my email and browser bookmarks are just as cluttered as the rest of it.
Eliminating Unwanted Clutter
On the other hand, I see plenty I could do to improve my workspace. I see what I refer to as “unwanted” clutter. That includes useless things like empty boxes, old bills, and disconnected computer hardware. There’s so much here that is of no interest and serves no purpose — those things can be thrown out or at least removed.
What I really want to reduce is the “constrictive” clutter. That’s all the unnecessary stuff that encroaches on my personal space and makes it smaller. It blocks my shelves and file cabinets and keeps me from using them easily. By eliminating the unwanted clutter, I should be able to enjoy more of my workspace and access my helpful, stimulating clutter more easily.
When I sat down to write this blog post, I never thought I’d end up defending my clutter. And I certainly never thought it would lead to a feature idea for my Mind and Memory Explorer website.
But that’s one of the great things that happens when you go into a project with an open mind and do some thorough research. You often learn things you never thought you would.
Where is your comfort zone when it comes to clutter? How could you make your workspace a better, more productive environment?
