#Unclutter your desk series
You and Your Team Series StressĬlutter can also affect our general mental health, making us feel stressed, anxious, or depressed. Other research has shown that a cluttered home environment triggers coping and avoidance strategies involving snacking on junk and watching TV. While we don’t know if this generalizes to the workplace, it’s possible that cluttered offices may produce employees who make poor eating choices during breaks and spend less time actually working. They also found that when participants cleared clutter from their work environment, they were better able to focus and process information, and their productivity increased.Ī study on the effects of clutter in the home found that individuals who felt overwhelmed by the amount of “stuff” in their homes were more likely to procrastinate. But scientists at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute have used fMRI and other approaches to show that our brains like order, and that constant visual reminders of disorganization drain our cognitive resources and reduce our ability to focus. You may think you’re not bothered by your overstuffed filing cabinets or the stacks of paper on your desk. Much of the research (and much of the public enthusiasm) around tidiness and clutter is currently focused on the home, but with workplace stress costing American businesses up to $190 billion every year in health care costs alone, it’s time to recognize the role that clutter plays in our work lives - and to do something to clean up the mess. Cluttered spaces can have negative effects on our stress and anxiety levels, as well as our ability to focus, our eating choices, and even our sleep. My research and that of others has shown that our physical environments significantly influence our cognition, emotions, and behavior, affecting our decision-making and relationships with others. The same is true for those of us who have succeeded in becoming paperless at work: one international survey showed that information workers lose up to two hours a week fruitlessly searching for lost digital documents.īut clutter can also affect us in more indirect ways. That is certainly true from a simple logistical perspective: we lose precious work minutes every time we go searching for a lost paper on a cluttered desk. The physical environment of the workplace has a significant effect on the way that we work.
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