photo: orphan jones on Flickr

photo: orphan jones on Flickr

When I worked in advertising, my desk was always in disarray. And as aghast as I was about my own clear lack of organization, I’d be equally aghast when I went to an account persons office and saw their neat-as-a-pin desks. How could anyone work that way? Where is everything? Aren’t you *working?* I would wonder.

And then one day I read an article that told me the reason why my desk was messy.

It’s because, as a creative person, I’m constantly looking for two unrelated things to combine.

After all, most creative ideas are not 100% new, but are just ways of taking what’s already out there and combining stuff in new ways. But in order to do that “creatively”, you have to break sets. Combine things that are unexpected, because they are not ordinarily grouped together. It used to be putting a new ending on an old cliché. Then it was combining two unrelated images in Photoshop. Not too long ago, it was someone who forgot that a camera and a phone were two completely different objects.

A messy desk keeps the solution to ‘problem A’ right next to the solution to ‘problem B’. It doesn’t file things away into a drawer labeled “the way it’s always been done.”

The internet is the biggest, messiest desk there is. I like to use that to my advantage.

Do you?