Forget everything everyone told you about being cleaner and more organized, and said that it helps your performance and creativity.
Like most of the common and popular beliefs, this particular one is also wrong. So if your room or study table or workspace is messy and full of clutter, it might actually help your brain function better. But how?
We’ll take you through a research study that comes as an incredible good news for all of us who keep heaps of stuff all around us.
What’s the point of a neat and tidy desk?
According to researchers at University of Minnesota, a neat and clean desk is more suited to make people stick to a regular routine. For example, if you want to perform simple mechanical tasks or do the routine stuff like every other day, then keeping a neat and tidy desk helps you subconsciously to do exactly that.
A neat and tidy desk conditions your mind to stay on a simple track, prevents it from drifting off, stops any original thought. So it can help you in doing simple things that don’t require creativity, innovation, or original thinking.
Albert Einstein had a messy desk
By far the most original thinker of the 20th century, Albert Einstein had a messy desk and he loved it.
A study was done in which workers of a company were asked to suggest new and innovative ways to use the old products in their office. People with messy desks were always the ones to come up with most original and creative ideas, while the people with organized desks were left behind with their plain ideas.
Reseachers at Palm Beach Neuroscience Institute agree that messy desk leads to creativity, and creativity is a sign of true genius.
How does a messy desk boost your brain?
Neuroscientists have discovered that total silence or absolute quiet aren’t very productive for the human brain. Human brain needs to be active, for it to be active it needs a certain amount of background noise to process while you are doing some work.
This is why some people study better or work more effectively while listening to music, or white noise, or ASMR.
University of Columbia researchers found that the average level of background noise at a coffee shop is helpful to make you more creative since it suppresses the distracting thoughts from your mind, and helps you focus on the task at hand where you can be more creative.
A messy desk is just “visual background noise” that your brain needs
Similar to background noise of sound, your brain also needs a visual background noise. The clutter of stuff at your desk keeps your brain processing the noise so that you don’t become too distracted with internal thoughts, and the more creative parts of the brain can function freely.
Featured Image Courtesy: BBC
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