What is this about?
I know you’re probably rolling your eyes about Marie Kondo sparking joy at your work, but here’s a realisation I had while working at home — I am damned messy at work. My desk is often strewn with notebooks, pencils, lunch and/ or snacks, and a other shit I just push to one side to make space for something else. The thing is, at home, I need things to be ordered and clean. And I hate that work is the opposite.
What else is this about?
It’s filled with practical tips on how to think differently about work — forget the “What sparks joy” spin that exploded after Marie Kondo burst onto the scene.
Blurb
Marie Kondo, author of the worldwide #1 bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and organizational psychologist Scott Sonenshein team up to bring joy to work.
The workplace is a magnet for clutter and mess. Who hasn’t felt drained by wasteful meetings, disorganized papers, endless emails, and unnecessary tasks? These are the modern-day hazards of working, and they can slowly drain the joy from work, limit our chances of career progress, and undermine our well-being.
There is another way.
In Joy at Work, bestselling author and Netflix star Marie Kondo and Rice University business professor Scott Sonenshein offer stories, studies, and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space for work that really matters.
Using the world-renowned KonMari Method and cutting-edge research, Joy at Work will help you overcome the challenges of workplace mess and enjoy the productivity, success, and happiness that comes with a tidy desk and mind.
The day after I started working at home, I stepped away from my dining room table (AKA desk) and when I did, I was stopped short by the utter mess that was before me. My diary, meeting notebooks, pens and phones (one for work) were just everywhere. My standing desk was stained with coffee mug marks and there was way too many crumbs on the floor. I had to get out the vacuum cleaner.
It was damned embarrassing — and even more embarrassing was the realisation that I was just like this at work. We work in an agile environment, so I have a locker, and stuff that I take out every day gets utterly spread over my desk. Don’t get me started at the state of my locker.
I didn’t want to be that person any more. And it’s not that I expected Joy at Work to spark some sort of massive realisation on how not to be that person, but I thought, it just might get my head on straight a bit.
Here’s the thing about the advice in Joy at Work
There’s going to be some bits you know, and probably tried at some point before they fell by the wayside. For myself, I thought at first the advice in the book is geared more towards people who do have a single desk they go to every day, with drawers and the like, but then I realised advice on being ruthless with paper, with admitting to myself the items I truly needed for my day actually made a whole lot of sense — and since I am a “just-in-case” person, my locker is pretty much overflowing of stuff, notes and papers I thought I needed from last year.
Your digital mess
Oh yeah, this book goes there. And I needed this more than I thought I would because the state of my downloads folder (which is where I’ve defaulted to keeping most things) is horrendous. And email, how the hell do those things pile up?
There’s some solid advice from Scott Sonenshein, Marie’s co-author and organizational psychologist in this regard. What I took away from it, was a different way of thinking about how I store everything — because I’m a “just-in-case” person in the digital world too.
And, here’s something interesting about multi-taskers I learned from this book: it decreases productivity by 40 percent, and people who multitask are typically the least capable of doing things properly. How many times have you seen the ‘ability to multitask as a must have on a job ad? if you look at in a work context, stopping work to answer an email means you’re going to go back to the work you were doing 20 minutes later when you can get your head back in the game, and yeah, in the work that I do, that happens more than I’d care to admit.
So what does that mean? Setting side email time — except, I’m still figuring out how to do that, because sometimes I really do need to answer emails asap. It’s a work in progress, I guess.
Then there’s filing emails — the book gives advice on one of the ways to consider filing emails, though looking at the state of my inbox, I’m inclined to show all the contents in a folder and start afresh — because yes, that’s a way to get control of things too.
So, what is the upshot of this? Joy at Work is attainable, you just have to figure out your path to it. And this book gives you some what of a head start.
I definitely know some people in my family who could use this book. ^_^
Haaa, I have some of those in my family too!
Having a neat inbox was key for me at work. As soon as I was done with an email, it got filed away into a folder so I didn’t have to look at it anymore! And sometimes you can’t just be ruthless with getting rid of paper at work – even though my old office was somewhat paperless, we still had to keep some stuff.
I have 849 unread emails in my inbox and folders. I saw that this week and nearly had a heart attack. I mean, the ones in the folders are fine, I don’t need to see them and they won’t bug me, but there’s a whole heap in my inbox and that’s just not right. Sighs. I need to be ruthless with my inboxes too. I just rely on the search functions so I don’t mind if they pile up.
Is ‘agile work environment’ the latest version of hot desking? I think the latter is stupid personally.
Sounds like this book has been motivating for you though.
YES, that’s what it is exactly! I don’t mind it so much bc i get in early and get a standing desk, which I need for my back problems, but the rest of it? The lack of a desk and drawers and the like? Yeah, it bugs me. It has been motivating, yeah — or rather, I am getting there lol!
I probably need some of the tips. OK, I definitely do. On the other hand, I doubt I would follow the advice. 🙁
I hear you, I tend to be the same, but the sheer embarrassment of realising just what my desk looked like is a great motivator lol
Never mind at work – I’m in DESPERATE need of this mindset at home. And as I work from home, that goes double… We are both rather untidy and would rather do something else than deal with the clutter that has gone on accumulating… So I think I need to get the first book – because she does seem to be a gamechanger!
I hear you about not wanting to deal with clutter — for me at work, when I put things in my locker, it’s out of sight, out of mind, so I let things accumulate in there and then spread it around my desk. Don’t get me started on what the carpet under my desk looks like after me being there for one day. Sighs. Try her first book; I genuinely think readers probably know all this in some form, but she presents in ways that might stick when it didn’t before.
I know someone who definitely needs this book!
LOL! Give it to them!
This sounds super helpful. My desk is a mess, so I could probably benefit from reading this. 🙂
I hear you — it definitely made me aware of my habits at work.
Oh gosh, this book sounds like it was written for me. I’m a disaster in all of these areas, lol.
I love books that help get your shit together but what they usually fail to talk about is those who don’t have the space or storage and needs all those items they usually deem unnecessary. The first key is to actually HAVE storage. Most workplaces and even homes these days have minimalist style furniture, it’s hard to find a desk with storage underneath. Document trays and bookends on a desk are a godsend for storage in a pinch. I’m going to grab a copy of book one, I desperately need motivation and curious to see how I can streamline my storage especially.
I can’t read the name Marie Kondo without thinking of the All That skit called Marie Kiddo on NIckolodian. If you haven’t seen it, it might be worth looking up. It’s hilarious… It brings me joy. 😉