What Your Workspace Desk Says About Your Personality
The next time you’re at the office, take a glance at how the desk spaces around you are decorated. People spend on average 5 hours and 41 minutes per day sitting at their desks, and you can tell a lot about a person simply by looking at how they maintain their desk area. Every professional who has a desk they call their own tends to personalize it in a unique way, and a number of studies show evidence that how you keep your workspace has an impact on how you work. Your desk becomes an extension of your attitude at work. Here are a few common personality types you’ll run into at the office.
Common Personality Traits
Working Through Messes
Lily Bernheimer, an environmental psychologist and director at Space Works Consulting, laid out research on common desk personalities in her 2017 book, The Shaping of Us: How Everyday Spaces Structure Our Lives, Behaviour, and Well-Being. One of the personas she identified, “The Clutterer”, has a work area that is messy, chaotic, and covered with a mix of personal and work items. Bernheimer says clutterers are more extroverted and welcoming to others. For some, this may be an innate system of working and an indication that you prefer to see everything laid out for you to work with.
Most people with cluttered desks are hard at work, busy and on the move, but having a ‘messy desk’ can communicate poor time management skills or create an impression that you don’t value the way you carry yourself at work. Having a desk cluttered with non-essential items for work, such as food leftovers, could also indicate signs that you’re feeling a bit down on the job.
Keeping Desks Clean and Organized
This is another common trait you’ll find in most modern businesses that like to keep things tidy. These types of people have desks that indicate that the person likes to be in control, follows the rules, and is highly conscious about appearances. Decluttering your desk this way means you embrace minimalism, which has been a growing trend for many popular startups, and shows you prefer to reduce the amount of any potential distractions that might disrupt your workflow. Keeping your desk wide open may also indicate that you are more aware of how you give and receive information with others.
Displaying Motivation and Accomplishments
Employees that value goal-setting, hard work, and achievements might decorate their work areas with their college degrees or leave some awards on the shelf. For these types of people, they highlight their career often and how well they accomplish their tasks. They may also have a few motivational quotes or inspirational posters around, which can also be signs that you’re persistent and a problem solver. However, too many awards around may just come off as bragging to other coworkers.
Showcasing the Playful Things
Whether you like video games or indie movies, displaying subculture items at work shows that you’re fun, personable, and aren’t afraid to talk about your hobbies outside of work. Having a few figures or artwork displayed on your desk helps demonstrate that you can be can be really enthusiastic about things you’re interested in, which may translate to your work projects too. Keep it simple and light, as too many items like these may become an issue if they conflict with your company’s work culture.
Highlighting the Personal Side
Showing photos of personal things – such as your family, pets, a wedding image – is one way to show that you value close relationships, according to Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Better Than Perfect. For family photos, they become a primary source of motivation for your work. However, Lombardo recommends limiting the number of personal photos, as too many may signal to your coworkers that you’d rather be anywhere else than work. On the flip side, the lack of images from your personal life indicates you value privacy and prefer to keep work and home life separate.
Expanding Your Work Area
According to Bernheimer, employees can take on the role of “Expanders” who love to claim extra room for themselves around the office. Over time, people who tend to have more dominant personality traits may slowly encroach on other people’s spaces, such as leaving some personal items on a colleague’s desk, or a coat on another chair. Expanders love drawing attention towards them and their space but may feel more defensive and territorial of their work area than your average coworkers.
