To some, a desk piled high with papers, files, notes and unread periodicals is a badge of honor and a way of projecting hard work and busyness. The bigger the mess, the bigger my job, right?

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Everyone works differently, but  a study by Boyoun (Grace) Chae and Rui (Juliet) Zhu, published in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that clutter can kill persistence and productivity.

Here’s how they measured the impact of a mess. One hundred undergrad students were exposed to either a tidy work environment, or a cluttered workspace, full of papers, cups, and folders. They were then asked to step into another room and work on a challenging – actually, unsolvable – geometry riddle.

Those who had been exposed to the neat environment spent an average of 1,117 seconds on the riddle before giving up. Those who came from the messy environment spent only 669 seconds on the task before giving up. Other experiments yielded similar results.

Self-regulation is widely considered to be one of the key drivers of success and this measurement of persistence is one way to determine its presence in a personality. The researchers hypothesized that the mess posed a threat that depleted mental energy and self-control, ultimately causing the mess-exposed students to give up on the challenge prematurely. Those students simply lost their drive to stick with the task.

What does your desk look like right now? If the piles have gotten high, a few minutes spent tidying up may just help you make that next big decision or deal. Tidy up to turn up your energy.