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.
