I don't think the area needs to be huge (but I use my surface for a lot - editing old photos, taking notes, etc etc...) but it does need to be designed well and your office area does need to have adequate storage. Thank goodness monitors have gotten more and more efficiently sized. I can't even imagine working from home with the Tube monitor we started off with when I was in High School. (And we had a partner's desk for all of the kids to do homework on!)

http://embritadesign.blogspot.com

I think the entire question is flawed.

Like most choices in the universe, it's a matter of personal preference with it's own set of equal but opposite pros and cons.

Example: it is commonly theorized in psychology that the height of your office ceiling directly influences your cognitive style; ie: If you have a low ceiling it helps you focus on detail oriented tasks (like debugging 2000 lines of code or fixing the innards of a pocket watch) while a high ceiling helps you do "big picture" stuff (like organizing your wedding or planning a WWII style invasion of Europe).

I suspect the size of your desk to be analogous to the "ceiling" theory. Larger surfaces subconciously influence freedom to think while small ones concentrate focus. The question isn't about which is better as they are both useful; the question should be what percentage of the time do you find one more useful then the other.

P.S. - The logic of avoiding a large desk because of dust is even more flawed. The size of the desk is irrelevant to the amount of dust there is in the room. In fact, a large desk is probably BETTER if you have issues with dust because it will show up more (rather then hiding on the floor) and you will probably clean more often because of it. (Wiping gets rid of 95% of it, vaccuming kicks about 60% of it back into the air)

I recently downsized my desk and to great effect. I now have a 3x3 table that I work on. It must depend a lot on how you work. I find that 90% of my work is on the laptop, and occasionally a need a few papers to look at or a place to set my coffee. The larger space just encouraged me to pile up papers instead of putting them away. And yes, dust was a much bigger problem. The active area of a desk doesn't really accumulate dust, but the collecting stacks of papers part does. On those rare occasions when i could use more space, I work on the dining table.

I've always had large desks, but recently downsized to a 30" wide vintage sewing desk that I refinished. The problem I've always had with a desk with a lot of surface area is that I end up piling junk on it. I have the same problem when I put the dining table near the door, as I'll dump all the mail on it. For me, less space is less temptation for clutter.

my desk is long and narrow. more like a galley office. i used to need a wide and lengthy desk for my art classes to fit my big pads. now all my work will be done on a computer so i cut down my desk space. it really depends on how much space you need.

It has to do with how often you want to return things back to their original place.

There is a sweet spot where it is neither too redundant to clean all the time, nor too much a burden to clean a lot of things at once, and that largely depends on your work. A writer who only uses a computer may still need a whole table of reference materials to map the brain, while an apparel designer will need a large table to lay all the fabric as well.

While I'm in a flow, returning tools, books or paper back to their drawers and shelves interrupts the workflow, thus counterproductive.

When I'm done with a project, I'll return (and sometimes clean) the materials back to their position and state. Everything starts with a clean slate again.

But if I forget to do this step, that is where clutter begins: objects lost their original position and were placed arbitrarily on the desk. The key is to always find where these objects should belong... which unfortunately always ended up in the Miscellaneous box.

I find that there is nothing wrong to be embarrassed about a table with many many open files. It shows that I'm working, and not a neat freak that spends half my work time cleaning. I find people with clean tables all the time are a little OCD!