Welcome to our interview with Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic – Professor of Business Psychology at UCL in London.

According to a new study 449,000,000 pieces of paper clutter the UK’s desks. Experts say our these workspaces can cause unnecessary stress and even harm our careers
If you have a messy desk then you may want to think of tidying it! This study suggests that you could be in line for a formal warning from your boss or even the sack because of decreased productivity and your health could be suffering.
Perhaps half of workers admitting to losing important paperwork because their desk lacks organisation.
Some desks are so unruly that over a quarter of those surveyed have received complaints from a colleague or boss, with more than one in ten receiving a formal warning about their messy ways, while one in 20 even say they have been fired.
But while an untidy desk can aggravate our colleagues, more disturbingly the research found that it can have a impact on our happiness and at work.
Many feel an immediate rise in their stress levels when faced with a messy desk as soon as they get into the office in the morning.
Debunking the popular myth that women are tidier then men, the study also found that members of the fairer sex have desks just as messy as their male counterparts
The study by Staples found that almost 70% of participants feel that having a tidy desk boosted their creativity, and 80% of people feel more productive and less stressed when their desks are in order.

Dana Duxfield interviewed Dr Chamorro-Premuzic, on behalf of PatientTalk.Org to find our more.
DUXFIELD : So Dr Tomas, please tell us a bit more about the study methodology
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : So the study was a survey commissioned by Staples and we surveyed 2,000 representative office workers representative of desk job workers and it was a self-report service so we asked them a lot of questions about their daily work routines and especially questions pertaining the state and nature of their desks and their work environment.
DUXFIELD : So your study shows that 449 million pieces of useless paper clutter the UK’s desks. How did you come by this figure, it sounds a bit too precise.
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : So it’s an estimate, and we arrived to that figure by generalising or extrapolating from the individual state of desks of workers to a national level. So basically we looked at the NHS estimate that says that there’s about 4/5 of workers who have desk jobs, so that’s North of 20million people and there’s about 19 pieces of unnecessary clutter in every person’s desk so if you multiply that you get to the figure of 449million useless things on people’s desks.
DUXFIELD : Brilliant, very interesting. So what percentage of the UK workforce actually has a desk?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : So it’s about 4/5 of people who have a desk so that’s clearly most people have desk jobs and today most people would have a computer, a phone, and then some necessary things like maybe a diary and notepads but then at the same time the alarming thing that the survey revealed is that they also have maybe 15 or 16 unnecessary items there and that’s the average so there are people who have 50 or 100 things there that are cluttering their desks.
DUXFIELD : Can all of this not be solved by the clear desk policy?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : The clear desk policy won’t work for everybody basically. So a lot of people in the past five six years have made a real effort to switch to a paperless office or a paperless desk and it works for some people but there are important factors that come into place for example older workers are not really used to reading stuff from a screen and they’re not really used to working only from the computer and doing things online so they need to print stuff and they need to review things and mark them and scribble around. So it will work for some people but for many people it’s still important to have certain things there and what the survey reveals is that people are not very good at discriminating and prioritising between the stuff that they have on their desks. They need to make more of an effort to have only the essentials there.
DUXFIELD : Do you think the amount of overtime and overworking we’re doing is becoming more of a factor?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : Not really I think that the amount that people need to work depends on many things so it depends upon the level of focus or concentration that a person has. So if somebody spends five or six hours doing something that somebody else does in a couple of hours that’s not really a sturdy reflection of how hard they work. Maybe the person who works six hours is distracted or doing other things at the same time. So there is no relationship between the time people spend on their desk and how tidy they are. What there is is a clear relationship between how organised people’s minds, thoughts and emotions are and the state of the desks.
DUXFIELD : One in twenty being fired sounds very high and almost certainly a case for wrongful dismissal. What are your thoughts?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : Well yes its 5% of the workers so that’s a lot if you aggregate that to a national level. At the same time it’s important to understand that it’s unlikely that the only cause for the dismissal is a messy desk. Mostly a messy desk will be part of a wider syndrome that includes lack of productivity, arguments or problems with colleagues because if the person can’t organise himself or herself, probably they’re not having very good relations with their colleagues either. And then finally stress or lack of job satisfaction or engagement. So if you think that these things kind of go hand in hand or co-vary then we understand that 5% is actually not that high.
DUXFIELD : How does having a messy desk cause lowered productivity?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : Well messy desks make it more difficult to find relevant stuff. It also makes everything slower, we are distracted by irrelevant papers, object etc. If you’re dealing with clients and they come that kind of conveys the wrong image. So if you have somebody come and visit your desk and it’s very messy and you have remains of fruit or food on it and it just kind of looks unprofessional and untidy that’s likely to impact your relationship with your customers or clients. And then it also creates stress and anxiety, so when you’re in a situation when you can’t find something and you stress out or you are anxious, then you end up just basically leaving everything aside putting everything aside, escaping your office or your desk and then that kind of harms your productivity.
DUXFIELD : What simple solutions would you suggest to people who have an untidy desk?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : The most important thing is that people realise that if they invest three or four hours to organise the desk and their offices then that’s a worthy investment of time. And yes they might have to delay things that might seem to be in their priority list but at the same time after they invest their time, everything will be faster, quicker, they’ll be more engaged and satisfied at work and this will be an instant immediate change. As soon as they come in and they surprise themselves with their tidy new desks, they’ll be happier, more satisfied, less stressed and more productive, so it’s definitely a worthy investment.
DUXFIELD : And lastly what is your view, is workplace stress a bad thing?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : Workplace stress is a terrible thing, people don’t understand just how severe it is but if you think about the fact that we spend maybe a third or our lives or more at work and that work impacts not just on our long term career and life plans but also affects our relationship with others because if you have a bad day at work and you’re stressed, you come back home and you carry that stress with you so it ends up impacting on your partner’s your family etc. Most of the problems that people have at work are stress related or anxiety related so basically if we can solve the issue of workplace stress, people will be happier, people will be more productive and the nation will benefit as well because our economy will be boosted.
DUXFIELD : Brilliant, so where can people go for more information?
DR CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC : If anybody wants more information they can go to the Staples website which is staples.co.uk or if they use twitter they can tweet a picture of their messy desk or their colleague’s messy desk using the hash tag #desksos and enter a competition to win £1000 worth of Staples products which should help them get organised and tidy their desks.
Staples are on a mission to find the nation’s messiest desk and provide office solutions to optimise productivity. That’s why we have launched a competition to offer one lucky winner £1,000 worth of Staples goodies. To enter, simply begin following @StaplesUK on Twitter and upload a picture of your, or a colleague’s, woeful work station, remembering to quote the competition hashtag #DeskSOS.
The lucky winner will be selected at random, and will receive a prize which is set to include a laptop, printer and an extensive collection of essential office supplies to a total value of £1,000.
Visit @StaplesUK on your Twitter account to enter.
Staples ‘Messy Desk’ Competition Terms and Conditions
1. The promotion will start 09.00 on Monday 4th March 2013 and will finish at midnight on 15th March 2013.
2. To enter the prize draw, you must be a follower of @StaplesUK and tweet a photograph of your messy desk.
3. Prize promotion is open to UK residents, aged 18 years and over, excluding employees of the Promoter, their agents or anyone professionally connected with the prize promotion and their immediate families.
4. There will be 1 prize winner who will win an ‘Office in a box’ from Staples which will include a laptop, a printer and a range of office supplies to be decided by the Promoter.
5. The winner will then be selected at random.
Promoter: Staples, Westfields, London Road, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP11 1HA