November 26, 2007

"If a Cluttered Desk is a Sign of a Cluttered Mind, What's an Empty Desk a Sign Of?" -Albert Einstein

“Mess is complete, in that it embraces all sorts of random elements. 

Mess tells a story: you can learn a lot about people from their detritus, 

whereas neat—well, neat is a closed book. Neat has no narrative and no personality.”

It's a shame that authors Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman didn't use Al Gore's office (image credit: Time Inc) as examples in their book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. While Abrahamson and Freedman concede an office must have enough space for the occupant to actually work, they also contend that people who tend toward a cluttered desk also tend to get loads accomplished -the piles are a retraceable trail of work flow:

“When things are carefully arranged and kept in their ‘proper’ time and place and done in precisely the ‘right’ way every time, you lock out some highly useful qualities—such as improvisation, adaptability, and serendipity.”