Messy or just genius?

Research is showing that messy offices may be more creatively inspiring than orderly ones. In that case, I may rank right up there with Albert Einstein, whose office was notoriously messy. A Time photographer who photographed it the day of his death found not an inch of desk space wasn't covered by paper. Look familiar? Photo by John Denniston.

Creative projects come to an end, and then there's the big clean-up. After my thesis defence was accepted Friday, I have been burrowing down to my desk's bare surface. To me, it all  looks a little lonely.

I will not deny that the very large desk of my basement office was, ummm,  increasingly crowded as I worked my way toward the end of a two-year SFU project on welcoming in ancient and modern times. The desk is five feet long and two and half-feet wide, and every inch was covered with drafts, notebooks, clippings, printouts, textbooks, and notes on notes. Nor was there just one layer, but several.

Unlike friends who gasped at the sight and wondered how I could work in such confusion, I found the piles comfortable, nests I could burrow into for that perfect quote, that exact date, that floating concept needing to be scooped out of the air and nailed down on the keyboard. It was like being surrounded by potential – all that history, all those thinkers, all those ideas waiting to be mined. Annoying, too, sometimes, when they hid beneath each other, requiring a search. But I knew that even if I had lined them up with military precision, because of the way writing changes direction, I’d still end up searching for something.

Since completing my thesis defence on Friday, I have been digging down through the desk midden. John and I cleansed 40-plus library books of stickies, packed them into five shopping bags and returned them to the SFU library. Old drafts, printouts and notebooks went to recycling. Inch by inch, the desk surface I hadn’t seen for two years reappeared. I even dusted. My friend Linda, who inclines toward neatness, was ecstatic when she saw my office today.

Which got me thinking about messy work areas and orderly ones. Why are the former shocking and the latter commendable?  The value of tidy desks is a recent concept, an artifact of the mid-twentieth century and the influence of efficiency experts, according to a posting by Geoffrey James, contributing editor, inc.com. ( https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of-genius-according-to-scie.html )  In the past, a clean desk was considered a sign of “slothful laziness,” he wrote, noting that Mark Twain chose to leave his desk cluttered for photos. Samuel Johnson, Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs also had messy desks, as did Albert Einstein, who famously pointed out that “if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then is an empty desk a sign?” 

James cited a University of Minnesota study that tested how well students came up with new ideas when placed in orderly versus disorderly work areas. It showed that while both groups came up with the same number of ideas, the ideas from those in the disorderly areas were more creative and interesting.  

An article by Andrew Tate on Creativity and Pychology, ( https://www.canva.com/learn/creative-desks/) also cited university studies that showed students in messy rooms were more creative. He speculated that mess may be a reminder “that the world is not an ordered and structured thing, but something that contains chaos and unknowns. This jumpstarts our brains into creativity mode and makes us remember that it is OK to be a little bit unconventional and think creatively.” But he conceded that degrees of useful messiness are different for everyone, so the neater among us have to find their own level of creativity and orderliness.

Tonight, sitting at my clean and shiny, but somehow uninspiring desk, I am enjoying the headline on the  Geoffrey James posting: “A messy desk is a sign of genius, according to science: Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs had messy desks, just like most other geniuses.”

Five bags of library books went back to SFU on Saturday, reducing some of the mess on the desk.

I had eight notebooks referring back to useful sections in those textbooks. 

My professor suggested taping the main points I was dealing with next to my computer to ensure I stuck to relevant issues. 

Oh dear. Notes referring to notes is what we are seeing here.

This is what happens when you can't get your mind off your project. You grab the nearest scrap of paper while you are making dinner or washing dishes, scribble down the idea and hope you can read it later.

All those books that went back to the library weren't my only stash. Here are a few of my own that will ensure I have Rome material to read for a long time to come.