There is a lot of bias against messy desks. If you’re not neat and organized, your coworkers might make assumptions about your abilities, and worse, your boss might criticize you for it. But is it really that bad to have a messy desk? And is the organization really as good as we all think? Here are five reasons why a messy desk can be a positive.
It takes time to organize. Some experts have suggested that the time it takes to organize your desk can be spent more productively doing your job, and that organization doesn’t save you a huge amount of time to begin with. Disorganized people often claim they know where everything is, and this is often true, and if you’re well organized but the paper you need is across the office in your filing cabinet, it might take just as long to get your hands on it. . as if it were under a pile on your desk.
Everything is in front of you. People with cluttered desks may actually be less prone to procrastination. That’s because all your documents are in front of you, not filed in a filing cabinet where they’ll be easy to forget. Your desk may be messy, but at least you can see at a glance what needs to be done.
Digging through the stacks helps you make connections. When you have to dig through your papers to find something on a cluttered desk, you can search for all sorts of things: projects you’ve been putting off, old ideas you’ve been thinking about, and even other projects and information that fit in with what you’re working on now. . If your desktop were organized, your projects would never get “shuffled” like this, and you might miss some important connections.
Organizing is a form of procrastination. You can spend hours every day organizing things instead of doing the actual work. With a cluttered desk, you naturally organize your work in a way that reflects how your mind works. When your desk is cluttered, you can actually be more efficient and effective than if it were organized.
Creative thinkers are messy. Creative thinkers tend to have cluttered desks. In January 2006, a study of hundreds of CEOs indicated that the highest scores on innovation and risk-taking were the lowest on organizational skills and neatness. Creative people intuitively organize their desks to match the way their minds organize information, and studies suggest that people with cluttered desks have great career potential.
So the next time someone criticizes you for having a messy desk, don’t feel guilty and try to organize yourself. Be proud of your mess. It indicates a creative and innovative mind, and means that you are likely to be more productive than your organized colleagues.