My office is a mess—the most cluttered and disorganized it’s been in years. Why? Because my mind has been elsewhere. For the past few months, I’ve been deeply engaged in professional and creative projects that have absorbed my attention. The mess in my office isn’t the residue of neglect, it’s a wayfinding system. The piles on my desk, on the floor, and on the window seat are touch points for the diverse projects I’ve been working on; cairns that mark my progress and provide entry points when I need to find my way back into the work. But the clutter around me may also serve another purpose, it may be fueling my creativity.

The Neatniks vs. the Clutterbugs

The feud between the Neatniks and the Clutterbugs has been going on for a long, long time. The Neatniks claim a neat work environment decreases stress and aids focus. The Clutterbugs claim clutter enhances creativity. Which camp is right? 

Kathleen D. Vohs and two colleagues at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota conducted a series of studies to see if they could answer this divisive question. Not surprisingly, they found both camps are right:

There exists a large and growing industry centered on instilling environmental orderliness. Proponents claim that people see measurable life improvements from becoming neat and tidy, and the industry can point to multiple billions of dollars in annual revenue as evidence of success. In contrast, many creative individuals with Nobel prizes and other ultra-prestigious awards prefer—and in fact cultivate—messy environments as an aid to their work. One such person was Einstein, who is widely reported to have observed, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” As is the case with many vociferous debates, it seems that both sides have a point. Orderly environments promote convention and healthy choices, which could improve life by helping people follow social norms and boosting well-being. Disorderly environments stimulate creativity, which has widespread importance for culture, business, and the arts. Our systematic investigations revealed that both kinds of settings can enable people to harness the power of these environments to achieve their goals.

—Kathleen D. Vohs, Joseph P. Redden, and Ryan Rahinel, Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices,Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity

Creativity is about forming connections. The studies conducted by Vohs and her colleagues showed that disorderly environments (messy spaces) tend to make people more receptive to new ideas, while more orderly environments (tidy spaces) tend to encourage more conventional thinking. In one test they devised, subjects were assigned to a messy or tidy room, then asked to come up with new uses for Ping-Pong balls. The subjects in both types of rooms came up with about the same number of ideas, but the ideas generated by the messy room subjects were 28 percent more creative (as judged by an independent panel). In addition, the messy room subjects “came up with almost five times the number of highly creative responses as did their tidy-room counterparts.” The findings of Vohs and her team have been confirmed by other researchers.

Messy environments boost creativity; tidy environments promote a sense of well-being (which may in turn enhance the ability to focus). So how do you know which environment is best for you?

The Creative Process: Generation and Selection

Close to 100 years ago, social psychologist and co-founder of the London School of Economics Graham Wallace outlined the five steps he believed creators went through to bring their ideas to fruition:

1. Preparation stage: The time when you gather your materials, do your research, brainstorm ideas, and take long walks to let your mind wander through your various ideas while you wander.

2. Incubation stage:  When you let go of your idea so it can simmer on the backburner of your mind.

3. Illumination stage: The “aha” moment when the solution appears and you know exactly how you’re going to solve your creative problem.

4. Evaluation stage: The time when you reflect on your idea, test it against your original idea or problem, explore alternatives, and then decide whether you’re going to forge ahead or go back and start the process again.

5. Verification stage: The final step where you do the work required to bring your idea to life so you can share it with others.

Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, creativity isn’t the rational, linear, predictable process Wallace mapped out. Recent research on creativity by Guillaume Fürst, Paolo Ghisletta, and Todd Lubart (Toward an Integrative Model Creativity and Personality: Theoretical Suggestions and Preliminary Empirical Testing) groups the various processes that go into developing a creative idea into two classes: Generation and Selection. Generation is focused on developing ideas, what we commonly call brainstorming. Selection is focused on evaluating ideas. It’s the stage where we assess the relevance and appropriateness of our ideas and elaborate on them.

The ideas that inform the Generation and Selection phases are reflected in other models that use different terms to convey similar ideas, such as Divergence/Convergence, and Ideation/Elaboration. (Fürst and his colleagues use the term Divergent and Convergent to describe personality traits associated with creativity, not the creative process itself.) These models shy away from breaking the creative process into smaller, linear steps because we also now understand that creativity isn’t rational, predictable, or linear—it’s an ad hoc, cyclical, iterative process.

Messy environments can boost your creativity during the Generation stage; tidy environments may be helpful during the Selection stage. Does that mean you should clear your desk as you transition from Generation to Selection? Moving the things that stimulate new ideas out of the way may be helpful as you begin to narrow your focus, especially things that take you in a new, as yet unexplored direction. Out of sight, out of mind—for better or worse.

Lost and Found

As I was working on this article I remembered a book (Ambient Findability, by Peter Morville) I wanted to check to see if I could find anything in it that would be relevant to this exploration. I looked for it on my shelf of technology-related books and didn’t find it. Then I remembered it was in one of the piles on my office floor—it’s been on my mind for some time. As I was on my hands and knees flipping through the pile of books, I noticed another book in an adjacent pile—Rebecca Solnit’s The River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. Seeing Solnit’s book on Muybridge reminded me of another book of hers that might have something relevant, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Digging through the piles around me, browsing my shelves, and walking around my house stimulated my thinking in ways that probably wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t surrounded by the physical artifacts of my current interests. 

It’s not surprising that clutter promotes creativity. The piles in my office are idea-blossoms: the book titles, mind-maps, notes, and folders in the pile, and where the pile sits on my desk or floor, record of my evolving thought. Taken together, what I see as I look around my office is an idea-garden—the organic process of discovering and making meaning.

The subtitle of Ambient Findability is “What we find changes who we become.” It also changes what we think and create. When I bump up against a pile, even when it’s not the one I’m looking for, something rubs off: the scent of a new idea, the residue of a forgotten source, a fleeting impression of an image, or even just a name or word I wouldn’t have come across staring into cyberspace.

Clutter creates good chaos, a little resistance that slows us down and keeps us from focusing too quickly. From time to time, I’ll get lost in a pile—digging into the materials, exploring inspirations and notes. Creativity is an ongoing process of getting lost and finding the way. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit writes:

...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.

Creativity is messy. What looks like chaos may in fact be a slowly materialising map. Here’s Solnit again: “That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.” Lost in the clutter, lost in thought, lost in your creative work.