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Let entropy reign
December 22, 2006

Is your desk clean, and is your lab neat and tidy? If you’re like me, the answer is no, and if you’re like me, perhaps you take comfort in this quote from Einstein: "If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

I’ve often wondered, however, whether Einstein was right in suggesting this analogy. After all, he was wrong about that cosmological constant thing.

In any event, I make periodic attempts to get better organized—usually around the beginning of a new year. “Getting organized is one of the top five New Year’s resolutions people make,” reports the National Association of Professional Organizers, which has declared January “Get Organized Month.”

Fortunately, before engaging a NAPO professional or expending any effort myself, I came across “Saying Yes to Mess” in the New York Times: “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.”

These studies, the article continues, confirm “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.”

Actual studies are showing that Einstein was right. Let entropy reign.

Posted by Rick Nelson on December 22, 2006 | Comments (0)