“Productivity” is a word we hear a lot. Our bosses tell us that we must be “productive” to receive a payment, in schools our teachers say that we must be “productive” to learn, even in our house we must feel “productive” to have everything in order.

But how are we productive?

Like many other people, I’ve tried most of the advice we commonly see on the internet to be productive, to Pomodoro Timer, to-do list, time blockers, turn off my phone, and accountability partner. However, there came a moment when I realized that doing all those strategies was only moving me away from the most powerful way to be creative. And it reaches a point where being too organized began to affect my way of thinking.

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While it is true that reducing decision fatigue does free us to spend more of our limited cognitive load to solve analytic problems, reducing our distractions can be counterproductive in cultivating creativity. Creative people are actually more prone to distraction due to a reduced filter of outside stimuli. By letting in more noise, they’re exposing their brain to more information.

Scott Birnbaum, the vice president of Samsung semiconductor, said that “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor.” In one study about creativity, only 16% of people reported finding creative insights while at work. The principal reason is that when you are working directly on a task, your mind focuses on the problem at hand, but when you are not working, your mind vague freely.

So if we are more likely to solve problems when we are least alert, the correct way to activate our creativity is precisely doing the opposite to what an overly productive routine tries to teach us. For this reason, instead of blocking out all distractions to be productive, now I allow myself to be messy in certain moments of the day to let my creative thoughts flow. This includes getting up the desk to do aerobics in the middle of the day, allow me to do absolutely nothing for a period of time, and switching tasks even if what I’m doing is a priority.

An overly structured productivity routine can kill our creativity; sometimes, we need to be messy to let our feelings flow.