[jillesvangurp]

This is highly subjective; not everybody is wired the same way. What looks chaotic to some is normal to others.

Some people are just naturally a bit chaotic and actually thrive on that for creativity. Others can't think straight until they first clean and organize everything around them. This can relate to the physical world but it also extends to planning and the state of things in software projects. I spend a lot of time staring at screens. The distinction is not that relevant to me.

I have a thing that I call problem inception where it's normal for me to start fixing one thing discover another thing in the process that also needs fixing and so on. I sometimes find myself four or five levels deep before being able to climb out and fix the thing that I was supposed to fix. It's fine. But it's hard to estimate and plan this. Solving hard problems is almost impossible without getting good at keeping track of such problem dependency graphs and getting structured about dealing with chaos and uncertainty.

Part of my process is another thing which I think of as "immersing myself in the problem" which boils down to embracing the chaos rather than trying to contain it. Patterns only emerge from chaos once you fully grasp it.

And another thing at play here is spatial memory. Your desk might look chaotic to others but once you have internalized the chaos, you kind of know where everything is. Chaos is just complexity you don't understand yet.

And sometimes there's just too much chaos and cleaning it up is actually exactly the right thing to do. I deal with technical debt and other gardening type issues when I get stuck. Often that unblocks me.