“If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Albert Einstein
Case Study of a Cluttered Green Desk
I have an archaeological dig of papers on the top of my desk that I have been meaning to excavate, classify and catalog. The sheet on top tempts me with the adventure of discovery, its yellowing edges providing a colorful contrast to my green desktop. The green isn’t mold, it’s an environmental statement that says I prefer to spray paint a wild child Goodwill find instead of buying a polite, conformist metal model.
There’s a rooted, comforting feeling in working at my cluttered green desk. I look at the stacked papers holding nuggets of fascinating research information and those furiously ferreted out facts and I feel intellectually rich like I am working in an eternal library.
Most of the time I can ignore my cluttered desk, but despite focused and dedicated ignoring, the neat, organized seeds that society implanted in my consciousness continue to germinate and occasionally my mind is cluttered with concern about clutter.
Does A Cluttered Desk Lead to Cerebral Cortex and Career Catastrophe?
According to Anne Fisher, Fortune Senior writer, clutter can be the paper trail into career catastrophe. She and her CNBC colleague Jane Wells cite some facts to back up the “clutter is catastrophic to your career” argument. Jane Wells cites a survey by Brother International, which sells office products and office organization items, but the statistics are interesting.
Brother says that it interviewed about 800 office workers and estimated that 76 hours per year or nearly two work weeks per person are lost searching for items around the office or on the computer. Three out of ten employees admit to losing a file folder a year and one out of four lost a mobile phone, a calculator and/or a flash memory drive.
Anne Fisher seems to side with the clutter side when she writes that a cluttered desk doesn’t predestine a clutterer to failure, but the perception that a cluttered desk is the symptom of a cluttered mine or something more ominous will cloud a bosses’ promotion vision. She cites Christine Reiter, a productivity specialist at Corporate Coaching International in Pasadena, California, who tallied a list of helpful hints to help clutterers become more organized. Christine’s list includes suggestions to store the most frequently used materials within easy reach, like in a right-hand desk drawer and to keep a to-do list close at hand, organized by category and updated at the end of each day.
A Cluttered Desk is a “Cognitive Artifact”
Dr. Jay Brand a psychology professor and a “cognitive engineer” for office furniture behemoth Haworth in Holland, Michigan, doesn’t believe that a clean desk always indicates a productive employee. He argues that a clean desk can hinder personal efficiency because a person’s desk is an extension of his/her mind. He points out that human memory has a limited capacity, or finite ‘cells’ available for storage and since most people do several things at once they almost immediately ramp their working memory to capacity. They need a place to store some of the information from their working memory into the environment and what more logical place than their desks?
According to Dr. Brand, these cluttered desks that people use to store information from their working memory are called “cognitive artifacts,” and they expand a person’s capacity to think and utilize the environment. He argues that companies with clean desk policies waste time by requiring workers to clean up their cognitive artifacts every night and re-clutter them the next morning. He points out that everyone has a different working style and piles can be organized topically, chronologically, or according to an individual system. As long as the pile means something to the person who made it, it is effective.
Dr. Jay Brand Says to Avoid Being a Pack Rat
In the interests of honesty and full disclosure, Dr. Brand confesses his work group area, the industrial design division at Haworth, has the reputation for being difficult to clean and he hastens to add that using space to think is not an excuse for being a pack rat. Some of Dr. Brand’s suggestions for controlling the individual “cognitive artifact” or desk include:
Sort through finished files, discard the material you don’t need, and put the rest in storage. Layer information using multiple surfaces. Shelves help separate information and keep ideas from getting lost. Move things around in the piles to reestablish their significance. Keep your important projects and priority material within grabbing distance.
Ajilon Conducts a Survey
According to a survey by Ajilon Professional Staffing, a recruitment and placement firm, Nancy Neats and Carl Clutterers create a statistical heat, with 21 percent of workers claiming that they are neat and 20 percent claiming to be sloppy. The results of the survey were based on telephone interviews with a representative sample of 2,039 adults 18 years or older who are employed full of part time.
Ajilon offers these steps for people looking to streamline their workspaces.
Sort your papers and create folders according to project and deadline. Develop a low maintenance filing system and clean it out periodically. Do the same thing with e-mails. Section off your desk and workspace so that everything has a specific place. Schedule weekly clean ups to tune up and toss items that are no longer needed.
Ajilon Survey Results to Use for Pro Clutter AmmunitionWomen are more organized than men. The survey shows that 56 percent of women claim that they keep their space organized as opposed to only 42 percent of the men. The older you get, the messier you get. About 60 percent of 18-24 year olds keep their office space organized, but only 36 percent of workers between 55-64 do the same organizational job. The higher the salary, the messier the person. According to the Ajilon Survey, 66 percent of Americans making $35,000 or less a year say they are neat, where only 11 percent of people earning above $75,000 a year make the same claim. People with more education are messier. Only 16 percent of people with college degrees consider themselves neat, compared to 29 percent who did not finish college.
Still Cluttered and Unashamed
A cluttered desk isn’t the sign of a cluttered mind, just a busy one. The more ideas and activities I generate, the more clutter accumulates on my green desk. I enjoy the aura of a busy and productive person working behind paper mountains, but occasionally my neat gene kicks in and I need to reread my clutter justification.
Now, what did I do with those Ajilon Survey Results to Use for Pro Clutter Ammunition?
References
Abrahamson, Erik and Freedman, David H., A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly-Planning Make the World a Better Place, Little Brown and Company, 2007