Messy rooms can boost creativity: Study

It is good to teach children concepts of organisation, but parents should not try to alter their personalities

A study by the University of Toronto has revealed that although organisation helps increase productivity and leads to better understanding, it also kills creativity.

Structure, which boosts efficiency, is actually a double-edged sword.

Neurologists say that messy rooms may be conducive to the development of innovative solutions, and scattered objects may boost creative instincts.

Dr Alok Ranjan, a senior neurologist, says, “Training is good, but you tend to think in a fixed format. Structured learning can lead to good results, but in a repetitive manner. People who are disorganised normally have multiple things going on at the same time; it leads to lateral thinking.”

During the study, participants were given a structured set of words to create sentences. It was observed that they produced results more quickly with reduced persistence. It has been found that when words or objects are organised neatly, people tend to think along the same lines, within a similar framework.

Dr Sandeep Nayani, a neurologist, says, “Organised tools or words can cause people to think along the same lines because a structure has already been formed. If people identify a structure, their thinking becomes more rigid. There is no scope for them to think out-of-the-box.”

Neurologists say that people are afraid of overstepping their boundaries even if they know that it could lead to better results. Medical experts say that although it is good to teach children about the concept of organisation, parents and teachers should not try to alter their personalities.

Shruthi Raj, an elementary school teacher, says, “At the primary level, we often let children find words from charts bearing scattered letters. We use building blocks and other teaching aids to encourage them to think creatively. But higher education stifles their creative instinct. We should encourage students to think outside the box rather than stress on repetitive practices by giving them a fixed set of rules, words or objects to use.”

She adds that it is not unusual to hear students complaining about having lost marks for not using a particular formula to solve a mathematical equation.