How do you identify as a person? Are you organized? Neat? OR are you Messi? And I mean messy with a capital ‘M’.
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Well, friends, if you answered with the latter, know that you are not alone.
In fact, I self-identify as an organized disaster — meaning that stuff is everywhere, but at least you know where exactly it is. Only people who understand what I mean will truly empathize with my sentiments here.
Mhm. Yeah. You know who you are.
You know who you are because every time your mom comes to visit and comes up to your dorm, you hear the pained wince just as you unlock the door before you’ve even considered opening it.
Keep your head up, kid. There’s hope for you yet.
Kathleen D. Vohs, Joseph P. Redden, and Ryan Rahinel Carlson from the University of Minnesota published an article titled Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity in the journal Psychological Science in September of 2013 about the different effects having a messy to neat desk can have on a person.
They used three experiments to explore if the two groups would be more likely to donate money, choose an apple or a chocolate bar as a snack and whether an individual would be more inclined to choose ‘classic’ versus ‘new’ in an option between the two.
Truly, pretty exciting stuff.
They concluded that individuals with neater desks were more likely to donate more of their own money in a charitable manner, pick an apple over a chocolate bar as a snack (lame) and would be more inclined to pick a ‘new’ idea versus a ‘classic’ one.
The individuals with the messier desks were much more inclined to be creative and pick a “new” idea over “classic” one.
And although they (we) might have folded papers and extra water bottles and granola bar wrappers and extra phone chargers or pens or partially dead plants or maybe some socks, goshdarnit they are a creative bunch.
Both organized and messy people are extremely valuable to society — check out Business News Daily’s Article about it here. Or check out the New York Times blogpost about it here!
So, even if you’re up to your eyes in paper and business cards, just know that your creativity is an asset to society.
So, neat people: keep doing you. And messy people: also keep doing you...just make sure there isn’t any rotting food or anything like that...awesome.
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