Book Review: High priestess of ‘minimalism' Marie Kondo offers tips on how to declutter your career

Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondo
and Scott Sonenshei

By now you’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo, high priestess of a ‘minimalistic’ and simplicity-loving outlook towards living. Her philosophy revolves around the question, “Does this spark joy?” and her suggestion is to preferably get rid of whatever does not spark joy in you. Based on this advice, her complete programme promises nothing less than happiness. The KonMari method, as it is called, has spawned her remarkable success: she has a New York Times bestseller book called the life-changing magic of tidying up, as well as a Netflix show called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.

Kondo’s first book dealt with tidying up at home. But Kondo believes that her KonMari method of tidying up is applicable to all aspects of life – especially work life. It is the subject of her second book, Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life that she has co-written with professor Scott Sonenshein, a well-known writer in his own right. Kondo and Sonenshein gently lob the question “Does this spark joy?” to all aspects of work life, including meetings, daily job-related tasks, cluttered workspaces, team-building and team-composition, as well as the composition of your social and offline networks and the nature of the files clogging up your computer. The authors write, “This book is not just about how to tidy up your workspace. It’s about how to put in order both the physical and nonphysical aspects of your job, including your digital data, time, decision-making, and networks, and how to spark joy in your career… [I]t’s tidying up properly that makes it possible to spark joy at work.”

The authors begin by tackling the most visible kind of clutter: they tell us that clutter of the physical kind “increases cortisol levels, a primary stress hormone. Chronically high levels of cortisol can make us more susceptible to depression, insomnia, and other mental disorders, as well as such stress-related physical disorders as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes”. Moreover, physical clutter leads to things being misplaced, and searching for these “adds up to an average of one workweek per year per employee… In the United States alone, this loss in productivity when converted to cash amounts to an estimated US$89 billion annually”. This figure, by a study conducted by a corporate, applies only to physical clutter. This is common clutter such as old papers, documents, stationery, electrical/electronic cruft, unused products such as books, and even objects of sentimental value. Here the thoroughness of the authors must be commended; they seem to have included all the ingredients of physical clutter.

There is also “nonphysical clutter”, the authors say: “excess emails, files, and online accounts… many meetings and other tasks…” Presumably in the US alone, “unproductive meetings” cost over $399 billion annually, the authors say. Clearly, companies will save a lot of money by eliminating such clutter. We are told to ‘tidy up’ our time by figuring out how many of our tasks spark joy in us, and eliminating as many joyless ones as we can. This may involve radical decisions such as delegation, or even letting go of some work goals that may increase one’s earnings over time but also bring more misery in their wake. The authors also tell us how to ‘tidy up’ the hundreds or thousands of decisions we make daily, in the process saving ourselves from misery, saving time and mental energy. We are advised how to declutter our schedule of meetings, eliminating those meetings that do not align with our goals. We are also told how to make the most of meetings that we do choose to attend.