Anyone who spends their time in a messy office has likely heard it before: “I don’t know how you can work like this.”
And in some ways, it seems to make sense. Piles of junk have a way of capturing our attention, whether it’s the half dozen sticky notes, the empty coffee cup or the collection of bobbleheads behind your laptop. Then again, others swear they can’t operate without the pile of business cards and scores of open browser tabs. Some of us thrive in chaos.
But what does the science say about clutter and productivity? Does a clean, orderly environment produce good worker bees? Ultimately, that depends on whether you think it does or not, says Sabine Kastner, a neuroscientist at Princeton University.
“How a person deals with clutter depends a lot on how that individual’s attention system is set up to deal with clutter,” she says. “Each brain is different.”
