Does messiness help with the design process?

Organization is my comfort zone.

Color-coded calendars mark my activities, my closet displays black pants in a perfect gradient, and my digital photo folders are meticulously labeled by date and event—all done without a second thought.

But there’s one part of my life where this innate skill fails me: work.

Yes, the place where I spend most of my waking hours is ironically where I lack organization.

While experts stress the virtues of a tidy workspace, my work environment is more chaotic than orderly—and, oddly enough, it’s intentional.

This habit goes way back to my days in architecture school.

The Origins of Chaos

Back in school, my “desk” was actually a large wooden door, a surface that served as a drafting table, model-making station, social hangout, and occasional bed after an all-nighter.

Meals were eaten there, sketchbooks and pencils were scattered everywhere, and the floor around it looked like a tornado of cardboard and glue sticks.

Cleaning up seemed not only unnecessary but actively counterproductive.

Pausing to organize disrupted the rhythm, the mental momentum of creating. Why waste time putting things away when I’d be pulling them out again in a matter of hours?

And it wasn’t just me.

Our studio was a hive of messiness. Each student’s desk was a personal cave of tools, ideas, and snacks. We lived in those spaces, surrounded by tangible proof of our creative process.

It felt natural, even essential.

The Paradox of Organization

Fast forward to now, and I’ve traded in the coffee-stained wooden door for pristine, matching desks—one for sitting, one for standing.

I’ve tried to delineate tasks: the sitting desk is for thinking and sketching, while the standing desk is for emails and task-checking.

Yet, despite my best efforts, BOTH surfaces accumulate stacks of paper, notepads, and a wild assortment of colored pencils by day’s end.

I tell myself, “I’ll need these tomorrow,” as I leave piles in place. “What if I have another idea?” I rationalize.

The act of organizing feels like shutting a door on potential. So, I leave the colored pencils ready for tomorrow’s spontaneous inspiration.

The Creative Case for Mess

Interestingly, research supports this apparent paradox…at least, I remember reading about it in some magazine article (I don’t remember where I left the magazine!)

Studies have shown that while a clean desk promotes clarity, a messy one can boost creative thinking. The chaos may stimulate new connections and ideas, offering an environment where spontaneity thrives.

In a field like design, where unconventional thinking is prized, a certain level of disarray can be an asset rather than a liability.

That’s not to say there’s no merit in tidiness.

A clean workspace can reduce stress and make switching between tasks easier. But perhaps the key is knowing when to embrace the mess.

For me, the piles of sketches and scattered tools are not just clutter; they’re reminders of ideas in progress, an invitation to jump back in where I left off.

Final Thoughts

The freedom to create the mess (work) and more importantly leaving those mess for the following day no longer feels like a bad habit or routine I need to avoid.

Rather I see the state as a creative jump-starting point I can get into without the feeling of “staring blank sketchbook”.

Of course, finding myself with TWO messy desks at the end of the working day, the argument of creative messiness requirement does not hold!

At least, I am not sleeping on the desk like my old architecture school days:-)