Being messy is a good thing. (NY Times)
An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.
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In the semiotics of mess, desks may be the richest texts. Messy-desk research borrows from cognitive ergonomics, a field of study dealing with how a work environment supports productivity. Consider that desks, our work landscapes, are stand-ins for our brains, and so the piles we array on them are “cognitive artifacts,” or data cues, of our thoughts as we work.
Isn't that the truth? Do you know people who say about their messy desk/office, "I know where everything is."? Are you one of them? I am. My office and desk are full of "cognitive artifacts" that remind me what is where, which ones are important, and when I might need them. It's nice to have a name for them, and I intend to use the term next time someone asks how I can find anything in my piles. They're just my cognitive artifacts.
H/T to Katie Newmark
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