According to a leading expert, having a cluttered environment reflects a cluttered mind and the act of tidying up can help you be more successful.

The advice comes from Jayne Morris, the resident “life coach” for NHS Online, who said it is no good just moving the mess around.

In order to clear the mind, unwanted items must be thrown away to free your “internal world”, she said.

Ms Morris, who claims to have coached celebrities to major business figures, said: “Clearing clutter from your desk has the power to transform you business.

“How? Because clutter in your outer environment is the physical manifestation of all the clutter going on inside of you.

“Clearing clutter has a ripple effect across your entire life, including your work.

“Having an untidy desk covered in clutter could be stopping you achieving the business success you want.”

She is adamant cleaning up will be a boon even though some of history’s biggest achievers lived and worked in notoriously messy conditions.

Churchill was considered untidy from a boy throughout his life, from his office to his artist’s studio, and the lab where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin was famously dishevelled.

Among the recommendations is that the simply tidying a desk at work and an overflowing filing cabinet will instantly have a positive impact on “your internal world.”

Anything that is no longer used should not be put into storage but thrown away completely.

Keeping something in the loft, garage or other part of the house, does not help because it is still connected to the person “by tiny energetic cords” she claims.

She said: “The things in your life that are useful to you, that add value to your life, that serve a current purpose are charged with positive energy that replenishes you and enriches your life.

“But the things that you are holding on to that you don’t really like, don’t ever use and don’t need anymore have the opposite effect on your energy. Things that no longer fit or serve you, drain your energy.”

Briton has long been a nation of hoarders and a survey showed that more than a million are compulsive about their keeping their stuff.

Brains scans have also confirmed that victims of hoarding disorder have abnormal activity in regions of the brain involved in decision making – particularly in what to do with objects that belong to them.