Messy desks healthy?

Any of my colleagues will tell you that viewing the surface of my desk is a rare occurrence. Usually it gets cleared off just in time for me to go on holidays or before family come to visit. A new book, "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder" is now on my reading list. The authors suggest that a clean desk might not be an indicator of work efficiency. In fact, "A messy desk is an amazingly effective work-flow system. You keep the stuff that's most important toward the front of the desk and on the top of piles, and the stuff that's less important ends up farther back and at the bottom," has become my new favourite statement. I might make the first sentence a new mantra.