The Daily Stat: A Messy Environment Makes It Harder for You to Focus on a Task

 

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February 19, 2014 A Messy Environment Makes It Harder for You to Focus on a Task In an experiment, people who sat by a messy desk that was scattered with papers felt more frustrated and weary and took nearly 10% longer to answer questions in a color-and-word-matching task, in comparison with those who were seated by a neatly arranged desk, say doctoral candidate Boyoun (Grace) Chae of the University of British Columbia and Rui (Juliet) Zhu of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in China. A disorganized environment appears to threaten people's sense of personal control, and the threat depletes their ability to regulate themselves, the researchers say. SOURCE: Environmental Disorder Leads to Self-Regulatory Failure

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