Clutter

Wise Words: clutter

Take a look at your office. Is it full of clutter? Does every item have a home — or is it cluttered up with pens that don't work, files you never open and photos you never look at? Is this a problem?

I've visited some strange and messy offices in my time as a business English trainer. I've seen desks so full of family photographs that there was barely enough room for a computer. (I've also seen some photographs that should have been hidden in an album rather than displayed on a desk for all to see.) I've been in companies where the offices have looked more like a greenhouse, which may be healthy for many, but terrible for people like me who have hay fever. I've had to teach while dogs, cats, birds, and even a hamster, have looked on — or joined in.

While I think it's important to show individuality and creativity at work, too much clutter might make people think that you are sloppy. Throwing everything in the drawer just before your visitors arrive doesn't always work either. (It doesn't work at home, so why should it work in the office?) Sometimes, they arrive without giving you enough warning!

A couple of my colleagues used the Christmas break to tidy up their offices. I didn't, for two reasons.

The first is because of my favourite quotation from Albert Einstein:

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk a sign of?" 

The second is because of a book I've read about the advantages of clutter. A perfect mess: the hidden benefits of disorder describes how clutter can help people find new ideas. I agree with the author David H. Freedman when he says clutter encourages serendipity:  "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."

To give serendipity a chance you have to have some room to work. If you want to find out how to de-clutter your desk a little — without emptying it completely — try our vocabulary exercise on the next page. But don't overdo it. Clutter is not all bad.