Originally published at: Einstein's desk and what it suggests about clutter and intelligence | Boing Boing
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Interesting. I often find that when I’m firing on all cylinders, my desk takes a slow-ish but steady flow toward entropy, until it gets to the point where it’s overwhelming and I either 1. clean it up and start fresh, or 2. overall productivity/creativity seems to languish while I flap among the mess. If #2, then I languish until I rally the energy to clean it up and then the cycle starts all over again. Nothing I’ve tried over the years has significantly altered this cycle.
I’d be curious if Einstein’s (and other’s) desks go through a similar cycle of being tidy, flowing happily toward entropy, then (sometimes with a pit-stop in being overwhelmed), starting over.
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As the old saying goes, a clean desk is the sign of a dirty mind.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Ha, hadn’t heard that!
I remember when I worked in an office sometimes coworkers would see my messy desk and say something judgy like, “Ack, I could NOT work like that,” and it was funny, because it always came when I was (work-wise) really nailing it. I did kind of end up feeling like my messy desk was superior to their super sterile clean desks, because I was rocking it and they were (more or less) dialing it in.
Now with the perspective of time, I see the value they bring with their steady dialing in of it. We need some steady.
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Guilty as charged.
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So what does an empty desk mean?
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I like mess, noise, chaos. Beloved likes organisation, silence, order. Fact is your desk is YOURS. You work your way. Any attempt to impose an “ideal workspace” will fail as it’ll be an average and no one is average. (N.B. “noise” is music/speech radio, I’ve had tinnitus since early childhood and what most call “silence” is loud radio static blasting from my virus-damaged inner ears.)
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don’t believe that clutter could inspire genius that wasn’t previously there, but it could serve as “kindling for the fire”, both figuratively and literally.
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You don’t work there anymore.
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ok I’m half way there, now I just have to get creative.
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I haven’t seen my desk in years.
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It may mean you’re a bureaucrat that follows the corporate security department’s clean desk policy.
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I concur.
I find it much easier to start in on work if everything is nice and tidy. Once things are underway, stuff gets messy. So when I worked in an office, first task every morning was to tidy away yesterday’s mess.
The same is true in my workshop.
I find having a tidy desk/shop is a powerful weapon against depression and procrastination.
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As usual, you beat me to it.
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I’m so glad we can be friends, in this most uncertain of times. Happy Friday!
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I think there are too many variables for it to really be translatable. For instance, when life has thrown a wrench into things for me and I am holding on by my nails, I clean house, a lot. Some of the worst times in my life have found me washing dishes religiously, cleaning my spaces, organizing.
I think it is a way to feel in control of things. It’s something one can do, even if we have no control of the horrors at hand. Normally, when I am happy and content, things are mostly a comfortable wreck. 
So, a clean and tidy desk in my office would mean something very different. I am not sure the mind is simple enough to read in a Holmesian kinda way.
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I would put this picture on my desk. Except there’s no room.
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My dad (a bank manager) said a clean desk was a virtue.
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If he’s anything like this one *engineer we had, it’s because he secretly had others doing all his work. (“I got too much to do! Can you handle this for me?”) A total zero. Idiot thought no one would notice. Lasted only the one year and was fired. (FYI: His brother is pro bodybuilder Tom Platz… as he made sure to tell anyone within earshot. A boor and an idiot.)
*how the fuck!
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“Pssh, that’s not even cluttered.”
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