Messy desks produce more creative ideas. A 2013 study in Psychological Science found that people working in a disorderly room came up with more creative solutions and were more likely to choose novel options than people in a tidy room. Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota ran three experiments. In one, participants in a messy room generated ideas for new uses of ping pong balls. Independent judges rated their ideas as significantly more creative and interesting than ideas from people in an orderly room. In another experiment, people in the messy room were more likely to choose a new product over an established one. The tidy room had its own benefits: people in it ate healthier snacks and donated more money. But when the task required breaking from convention and thinking in new directions, the mess won. The disorder appeared to free the mind from the constraints that order imposes, allowing it to wander into unexpected territory. Every person who has been told to clean their desk before they can think has been given the wrong advice for the wrong task. If the job is filing, clean the desk. If the job is inventing, leave the mess. Your mother was wrong about your room. Einstein, Twain, and Steve Jobs all worked in chaos, and the University of Minnesota just explained why.