Genius, Dirty Albert

I once read somewhere that Albert Einstein would be so deep in thought in the theory or formula he was working on, that he would not come out of his room for days.  In fact, there is a story mentioning that when his little boy came to his room, for a few minutes, he didn't recognize him.  My thoughts after reading this story were, how unorganized and messy his environment must have been if he didn't take the time to come out or clean up every once in a while.  There are many other examples of highly innovative, groundbreaking artists, inventors and leaders out there that lagged behind when it came to the cleanup department.  How did they do it?

You know all those times you heard that if your space and desk are not organized you can’t “think straight.” Well my friends, I am here to tell you, for those of you visionary kinds out there, a messy desk may in fact be what the doctor ordered. 

In a study in the September issue of Psychological Science, it was quoted that “working in a tidy room encourages people to do socially responsible, normatively good things like eating healthy and giving to charity.”  However, here is what was also found, working in a messy room was found to help with trying new things and to come up with creative ideas.

The researchers asked 48 participants to come up with novel uses for a ping-pong ball.  Half the participants worked in a neat room, and half worked in a messy room.  Although the number of ideas were the same, the panel of experts found the messy –room participants ideas as significantly more creative.  In a similar study, when having participants pick ingredients for a boost to be put in a smoothie, the people in the messy room were more likely to choose the health boost called “new” rather than the option called “classic” which was picked by the neat room participants.

This is huge! Why? 

For years, you have been told tidiness is the way to go if you want to be productive.  Now there are two bodies of research that have found that being neat is not the way all the time.  First, we found that the most novel and creative ideas come to us when we are in a relaxed environment, such as that out of the office, may be having a cup of coffee or even in bed.  Now we are also learning that not only a relaxed personal way of being is conducive to creativity, a relaxed physical space is also. 

Although, I am not necessarily suggesting for you to let your fridge mold with old take-out and your office to be lost under a pile of papers, I am advocating that if you have been hard on yourself about constantly cleaning, de-cluttering and organizing, you can now plan around it.

My exact thoughts:  designate a day of the week for creativity, and organize and de-clutter after you have given time for the creativity process to flow.  Thanks Albert, you knew so much.