---
title: Keep your desk cluttered
date: "2002-12-24T12:00:00Z"
categories:
  - links
wp_id: 988
description: I’m skeptical of clean desk mandates. Research suggests that 'pilers' often find information more efficiently than 'filers,' who tend to accumulate extraneous data and access their records less frequently than those with cluttered workspaces.
keywords: [productivity, organization, filing systems, workspace management, information retrieval, efficiency]
---

Interesting article on The Economist on the [value of a cluttered desk](http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1489224).

> ... the assumption that filers can find stuff more quickly is wrong. Filers, they say, "are less likely to access a given piece of data, and more likely to acquire extraneous data..."

(There's a "Clean your desk" initiative at BCG Mumbai going on right now.)