Each time we read a magazine and see a photo of a personality in his office we can notice that the surrounding area is tidy and all the stuff is very well organized. It is obvious that keeping cleanness is good for the image of the workspace’s owner and of an organization, if it is a rooted practice. But is there something more about workspace neatness than just image? Is the tidiness of our workstation telling more about our skills, our way of working and our effectiveness?

According to Christine Reiter, a productivity specialist at Corporate Coaching International in Pasadena, “your office is a reflection of your capabilities” and “even though a messy desk isn’t a sign of a character flaw, it does tend to give your managers and peers the impression that the job is too much for you to handle, you can’t make decisions, you are not doing the job or all of the above.”

A survey ordered in 2005 by DYMO, which produces labeling systems for offices, shows that employers think positively about people who have the habit of cleaning their workspace.51% of the 2,600 bosses surveyed worldwide agreed that there is a link between a worker’s organizational skills and job performance. When they evaluate a person based on the aspect of the desk most probably the employers have in mind the difference that this makes for the outsiders visiting the company and, of course, the productivity. The same survey quoted above revealed that every document lost by an employee costs a company $120. Another study conducted in 2006 by Office Depot business chain indicates that 34% of all the employees have messy desks and drawers and that they waste up to 15 minutes per day and 2 hours per week trying to find different items. 53% of them claim they feel at ease with the mess on their desks and that they do not face difficulties in finding what they need, while 67% recognize that they gave up at some point fixing the problem because they just do not know how to get organized.

Most of the organizations around the world have policies against “messy desks” or, even if not stated, they are hostile towards clutter at the workplace. And, as unbelievable as it may seem, there are companies which are simply intolerant with the staff who neglects cleanness and take tough measures against them. There were cases when people just got fired for this reason. It happened to a police officer from Pennsylvania. Australia’s postal service also decided to downgrade an employee and fine her with $2,300 for refusing to remove from her desk a photo of herself with friends–her fourth personal item, one more than what the institution allows.

While the benefits of keeping a clean desk are obvious, it seems that clutter is not necessarily a sign of low productivity and might have its advantages too.  After all, many brilliant persons use to work surrounded by piles of papers. Nobel laureate and University of Chicago economics professor Robert Fogel simply brought in a second desk when  the first one became massively piled. Messy work areas are often considered to reflect some kind of ingenious and creative way of thinking. Surveys show that this judgment is not completely groundless. In January 2006, a study on hundreds of CEOs  conducted by PsyMax Solutions indicated that those who recorded the highest scores in innovation and risk-taking scored lowest in organizational and neatness skills. Creative people organize their desks intuitively, according to the way their minds organize information and studies suggest that people with messy desks have great career potential. A survey taken in 2005 by Aijlon, a part of Adecco Group, reinforces this idea showing that people with messy desks are more likely to earn higher salaries than their neat and tidy co-workers.

The mess on our desks can work as a creativity booster. Think about the times when you had to digging in through your stuff to find something and you discovered projects you’ve been postponing, ideas that crossed your head some while ago and other old information that happened to fit your on-going projects. When we have a clean desk, chances to pump in on this kind of things that can release ideas are considerably lower.

Going back to productivity and effectiveness, there are voices who claim that messy desks can increase our speed of fulfilling tasks, as long as the limits of the common sense are not exceeded. Eric Abrahamson, Professor of Management at Columbia Business School and author of the book “A Perfect Mess”, says: “There is a sweet spot between complete order and complete disorder. What you have to remember is that there is a cost to order. If you stop to tidy up every time something becomes disordered you’ll continually interrupt yourself and never get any work done. But on the other hand, if you’re a complete mess you’ll never find anything.” Abrahamson notices that people with “a moderate amount of mess usually have everything to hand”.

Albert Einstein, the person with one of the most ordered minds, but with one of the messiest desks, famously asked: “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty desk?”. The fact is that one should not pass judgment on people based on the aspect of their desks because not all the persons have the same need to put things in order in their workplace. As long as the clutter on our co-workers’desks does not turn into a pigsty, damaging the general work atmosphere and the organization’s image, it can be viewed in the larger context of diversity. Elisa Hendricks, the author of an article called “WORKING HABITS: Messy-desk people risk crossing line into desktop Armageddon” points out the innovating potential of a team including members who have organizational skills and members who completely lack it: “While messy people may be frustrating to the more neat and tidy among us, the yin and yang of the two groups, when managed properly, can be great for a workplace, drawing out complimentary skills and ensuring elements of high creativity and top-notch organization are both represented in every project.”

Resources:

“Messy Desks Cost Workers Two Hours Of Lost Time A Week”, www.citynews.com

Annie Fisher, “Is a messy office hazardous to your career?”, www.money.cnn.com

Dana Knight, “Consequences of messy desks”, www.usatoday.com

Elisa Hendricks, “WORKING HABITS: Messy-desk people risk crossing line into desktop Armageddon”, www.canada.com

Eric Abrahamson, “A perfect mess. The hidden benefits of disorder” (Excerpt), http://www.aperfectmess.com

Jennifer Williamson, “Five Reasons Why a Messy Desk Is a Good Thing”, www.deskdemon.com

Margot Carmichael Lester, “Messy Desk”, http://airtranmagazine.com

Rhymer Rigby, “In defense of the messy workstation”, www.ftd.de