Your happy lumps of creative goodness

The upside of piles and why your brain likes them so much.

Maybe you loved taking human biology in school – maybe you hated it. I was a fan, myself, until we reached the chapter about the brain.

The stomach? Got it.

The heart and lungs? Got it.

The filtering liver – a little mysterious – though comprehensible. But, to me, the human brain was a gray globby thing that made no sense at all.

The problem? The aforementioned “globby” part. I couldn’t see the mechanics. Studying neuron cell diagrams didn’t help one bit. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around how that tofu-like mass could made my body move, see, or think.

Now that I’m a more patient grown-up, I’ve dedicated myself to learning about the brain to include in my work. At Inspired Home Office, of course, we talk a lot about the brain since it has such a profound impact on how you concentrate (or not) and how you organize your stuff.

Ready for some nerdy stuff?

Some research circa-1970, discovered specific neurons in your brain that process the edges of objects. Object edges? Crazy. There are, in fact, even neurons that respond to the distance between and the movement of object edges, too.

Uneducated, but my guess is that this edge-noticing neuron helped our ancestors visually track prey and predators.

Even if you’re not hunting buffalo or running from an angry mastodon, this research is relevant to organizing your workspace.

Edges in your office

Take a good look around your workspace, and I’ll bet you’ll find object edges everywhere.

Your computer screen has them. Papers have them. Books, files, pens – you name it. It stands to reason that the more edges your brain has to process, the more likely you and your brain might get overwhelmed. All those edges!

Lumps

A lot of creative people, including many of my clients, like lumps. Compared to lots of scattered papers, for example, lumps of papers are soothing. Scattered papers have tons of edges. A lump, by contrast, only has one set of edges.

See where I’m going with this?

If you pile stuff together, you’re actually giving your edge-processing neurons a break. How cool is that?

The trouble starts when you can’t find what you need in your lumps. You can’t always see what’s in your lumps because, well, they’re in a lump!

Helpful lumps and woozles

With apologies to Christopher Robin and Pooh, if you like to lump, you can put your things into helpful lumps:

• Helpful lumps allow you to see things and not forget about them
• Helpful lumps allow you to mentally process as few edges as possible
• Helpful lumps take up less space than a regular lump

My favorite kind of helpful lump looks like this:

This type of stair-step file holder has a small footprint on your desk, but allows you to see everything at once. (URL added to photos for your convenience – I’m not a vendor for the companies that carry these products.)

Incidentally, I’m not crazy about the folders with clasps (in photo) since they’re hard to get into. But the black wire thing is awesome.

Other helpful lumps can look like this (Notice the lack of a lid? Definitely a good thing.):

Or this…

Mine?

Okay, I’ll show you. It looks like this:

Client files were removed for privacy – I’m not that neat. Oh, and don’t talk to me about the wallpaper. It’s a project, trust me.

Other ideas? Your helpful lumps don’t have to live in a folder. I worked with a client recently who was thinking about putting up shelves and giving each project its own basket on the shelf, like a little nest for each idea to incubate in.

Be creative with making more helpful lumps. Trust what you need.

Things to try

Do you have a bunch of randomly sorted items that make your brain process edges?

Play with putting them into helpful lumps using the examples above and see what happens. It can be surprisingly fun!