According to new research, a messy workplace can sometimes indicate a more creative, innovative mind. The researchers started out pretty biased against the putting-stuff-away-challenged:
"We were thinking about doing a paper showing how being tidy makes people kind of do the right thing," psychologist Kathleen Vohs, lead author of a study in the journal Psychological Science, said in a telephone interview.
"And then we started challenging ourselves. Is there anything that goes along with a messy environment that could be good?"
So here's what they did:
A messy work environment, the research suggested, can bring out a person's creativity and lead to the birth of bold, new ideas. In other words, a less- than-perfect work environment can make a person more likely to think out of the box, or at least above the horizon of those neat people in the office.
...No amount of clutter is going to make an empty brain creative, but this research indicates that a little clutter may bring out the freshest and most creative side of you.
"The environment doesn't create something that isn't already there," Vohs said. "To the extent that you are creative, it pulls it out of you."
So clutter is good folks. Clutter is good.