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Organised Creativity – Does a mess breed inspiration

Posted 10 Nov 2009 - 4 Gratefully received comments

How do you work?
Is everything in neat piles, filed away, labeled and cross-referenced. Are all of your books and magazines sorted alphabetically on clean shelves that are easy to peruse?
Or are you sitting on a pile of research materials, your laptop perched on your knees, surrounded by sketches and the crumpled detritus of hopeless ideas?

The point of this post isn’t to discuss the merits of being tidy or messy. I fully realise that everyone is different and we all fall into our own work patterns and practices. However, I am interested in different ways of working and different approaches to design and ideas generation.

I’ll start with a list of those old sayings that you always hear from parents or management types:

- File, don’t pile.

- A home for everything and everything in it’s place.

- Don’t put it down, put it away.

- Find everything you need when you need it, get everything done when it’s due.

- A Tidy Desk is a Tidy Mind

Maybe these are all good advice, but they always seem manufactured to make you do something that you don’t necessarily want to.
There is only one popular saying I remember that promotes disorder:

- A cluttered desk is a sign of genius.

But that just seems like an excuse for lazy people to boost their own egos.

I did find one saying that hits the nail, square, on the head:

- A messy desk is only a sign of a messy desk.

I’ve never considered myself a tidy person or someone that revels in the chaos of disorganisation. I tend to swing from one extreme to the other. I go through phases.
My latest ‘neat freak’ phase has been triggered by the imminent arrival of a stable internet connection (some readers might be aware of my connection issues, more about it here). I should be back online properly today, so i decided that it was time for a major clean up so I can get back to my normal working practices in an orderly space.

I live in a small flat, and do most of my work there in the main living space. I don’t have the luxury of shutting myself away, so when I am in a messy mood it does tend to affect the rest of the room.
My annual clean-up is like hitting a reset button. I start off with good intentions of keeping everything orderly but it never happens. It’s all just part of my personal creative cycle, and I’m used to it.

The interesting thing is that I am more productive with certain tasks according to my environment. I find filing and paperwork a lot easier after my ‘reset’. But ideas generation is better when I’m surrounded with a bit of mess.
I like to think by the end of my messy cycle I’m working in an ‘organised chaos’. But I can never stand it for too long before I hit ‘reset’.

Another advantage of this cycle is what I discover during my annual ‘reset’. I go through everything, every scrap of paper, every discarded sketch, every bit of research and inspiration. It’s surprising how much of this mess can be recycled into future or current projects, after being discarded a few weeks ago on a project that is complete.

I’m not going to advise anyone to work in a tidy environment, or in messy surroundings. You all know how to get the best out of yourselves and what workspace is right for you.
I’m suggesting that you give different surroundings a try. If you feel that you have to work at a spotless desk, give a bit of disorder a try, if you work in a tip, try tidying up.
I’m always interested in approaching a project differently, and I think where you work and what that space is like does have an effect on how you think and how productive you are.

Change can be a great catalyst for inspiration.

How do you work? Do you have different work spaces for various tasks? Has a change of scene given you unexpected inspiration?

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