Why I Don't Have To Clean My Desk After All
The New York Times told me I didn't have to.
No, honest!
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. It’s a movement that confirms 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.And you wouldn't want me to become a prig, would you?
I thought not.
posted by fusenumber8 @ 12:03 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Excellent article.
Hey, I don't have an online subscription to the Times. Would you mind posting the title and author of the article so I can look it up on EBSCO?
Thanks!
Doggone it. It was up yesterday. I'll try to relocate the author for you.
You have no idea how much you just made my day. Thank you for passing along that permission to keep my office as cluttered as it is! Damn straight it means I'm creative!
It's by Penelope Green, and it was in the House & Home section on December 21st.
The Times syndicates a lot, so you can usually find copies of the article online elsewhere. Here's the backup version I'd linked to on my site: Saying Yes to Mess
I am also messy about time. I'm chronically 7 minutes late for everything. My family calls it "Beth Standard Time." I find myself disappointed if I arrive anywhere a few minutes early. The slogan for BST is, "We could have cut this closer."
A Cybil finalist and a bashed book jacket – it would seem like a wash EXCEPT for this article, which clearly lauds us messy deskers. I wonder what would happen if I turned over that piece of paper right there at the corner of my desk. The piece with the big stain on it. The piece my water bottle is sitting on….I just turned it over….It’s actually two pieces of paper stuck together. It’s a two-month old receipt that I printed out stuck to a written receipt from when the item (which I returned and was already reimbursed for) actually came. Okay, I’m a little embarrassed that it’s only two months old, but I swear my desk is REALLY messy.
Cynthia Kadohata
Ha! That'll show my stuck-up prig of an ex-NYPL boss who told me in my evaluation that my desk needed help! (She told me in fact that she needed to find something for me to work on, so there it was. Pah!)
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home