If you’re anything like me, it’s important to have some sort of order to get work $hit done.
Clutter distracts me and feeds my procrastination. Order provides clarity.
My mom and grandmother (both teachers) taught me to be “spick and span”.
I started my business from my dining room and six months into my first business, I finally leased my first office, because my intern pleaded. I was constantly cleaning my apartment rather than working — aimlessly multi-tasking, taking out the trash after it was halfway full, wiping down my stainless steel microwave for fingerprints, rather than focusing on finishing that proposal.
Back in 1999 when I started my first business, I was single.
Twenty-one years later, and a week into the quarantine, you can imagine what being a working mom with kids and a husband is like.
“Cleaning up after children (and a husband) is like shoveling snow during a blizzard.”
I re-listened to Marie Kondo’s famous book on tidying up, bought the manga version for my daughters, got a robotic vacuum & mop, cleaned out the garage, rearranged drawers in my home, re-feng shui-d my home, washed the curtains, and even cleaned the thin rails underneath our sliding closet doors using good chopsticks and Clorox wipes.
Yesterday, I read a Bloomberg article that posed an intriguing argument to neat freaks: Being messy may actually spur creativity by keeping interesting things in sight and top of mind.
What?
Does being neat curtail creativity?
Was Gustave Flaubert wrong when he said to “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”?
Do I need to throw out “sugar and spice and everything nice”?
Are clever minds never tidy?
Is there a correlation between being a creative genius and messy?
Maybe it’s actually okay to have a messy desk?
Maybe now’s the time to let go and experiment with clutter to see if it sparks inspiration while I’m not within eyesight of work colleagues?
Should I try it?
Hmmm
NAH.
Who’s with me?
Stay neat! Stay clean!
Xoxo
Kalika