Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondō

Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life Reviews

• 
  Rob

  This book is overall just OK, and therefore disappointing. Mostly because the sections by Mari's co-author - which amounts to more than half the book - were next to useless.
  
  Sections by Marie: good. I quite enjoyed reading about her struggles with maintaining Joy as her business grew and new challenges arose, as well as when her children were little. The self-reflective parts of the book by Marie were easily the best, and also the most relevant to her students - which, I doubt, is what the authors intended.
  
  I loved this excerpt (towards the end):
  
  

  After I quit the staffing agency and went independent, for example, only four people signed up for my first seminar, and two out of those four canceled at the last minute. In the large, almost empty seminar room, I struggled to get my points across, painfully aware of my own inexperience. I felt so miserable and so sorry for the poor participants that I longed to run away and hide.
  
  This experience taught me that I lacked marketing skills. I began reading as many books as I could find on PR and business management, went to seminars, made connections by joining morning gatherings for businesspeople, and started a regular blog to get exposure. Instead of trying to attract large numbers, I started out smaller, holding seminars in community centers for groups of up to ten people in tatami-mat rooms where we sat on the floor Japanese-style.
  
  Later, I opened my own booth at wellness events. To make sure I stood out, I wore a cotton kimono known as a yukata and stuck a broad fan in my sash emblazoned with the words “Let me solve your tidying problems!” I would wander around the site dressed like this to advertise my services.
  
  Through pursuing such strategies, I gradually reached the point where I could hold monthly seminars for thirty that were filled to capacity. The number of my individual clients also began increasing. When my waiting list grew to be six months long, people began asking me to write a book about my tidying method, and that led to publishing my first book.

  
  
  Section by Scott: next to useless. His sections are about tidying things like your digital work, time, decisions, your network, etc.
  
  The concept of tidying meetings, for example, is good (good in the sense that meeting management, including when not to attend, etc., is an important topic, and one that I care about). However, the advice Scott provides is the dime-a-dozen, thin advice about meeting management that's not all that helpful. Same with the section on Time; the immortal Peter Drucker starts The Effective Executive talking about Time Management, and his advice about Time Management is absolutely essential. I'm a corporate executive that has spent a lot of time thinking about meetings and time management, and Scott's advice in this book is weak and not particularly actionable. Tidying your Team, as well, was just useless. There are entire books about empowerment and teamwork - my favorite being Turn the Ship Around - and to talk about Tidying your Team to Spark Joy in just a few pages can't begin to make a dent.
  
  Ultimately, I think he fails because he tries to cover too many hard topics with very little space. And he tries to use the "Spark Joy" metric as a club for every one of them, which often feels like a huge stretch.
  
  Also - and this is a pet peeve of mine - Scott uses "studies show that..." about 1000 times...without citing the studies.
• 
  ➸ Gwen de Sade

  *throws book out of the window*
  
  Didn‘t spark joy.
• 
  rachel, x

  i just got approved for Marie Kondo's newest book. i've well and truly Peaked
  
  
  Blog •
  Trigger Warning Database •
  Twitter •
  Instagram
• 
  Bkwmlee

  
  3.5 stars
  
  I received this book as a Christmas gift from one of my friends who is a huge Marie Kondo fan. While I did enjoy this one quite a bit, some parts I felt were repetitive and mostly stuff I had heard before — this was mostly chapters 4 and on, where Kondo’s co-writer Scott Sonenshein writes about tidying as it pertains to digital work, time management, decisions, and networks. To be honest, when I read the “note to reader” at the beginning of the book and discovered that, out of 11 chapters, Kondo only “primarily wrote” 4 of the chapters, I did feel a bit disappointed — I mean, I knew going in that this would be a collaborative effort between Kondo and Sonenshein, but I guess I was expecting the writing to be either more evenly distributed between the two or Kondo being the primary author, since she does have more of the name recognition after all (case in point — I know my friend, for one, bought this book purely because of Marie Kondo’s name of the cover…she has absolutely no clue who Scott Sonenshein is). The other thing too is that, as I was reading, I noticed distinct differences between Kondo’s writing style and Sonenshein’s, so when both were mashed together for this book, I felt that the flow was kind of odd and, for me at least, it did affect the reading experience more than I was expecting it to.
  
  Having said all that, content-wise, I felt like this was one of the better “how to organize your work life” books that I’ve read (and I’ve read plenty of similar books over the course of my 20+ years working in corporate America). What made this one different in my opinion was the tone and the approach. Business self-help books (at least the ones I’ve read) tend to be “overly preachy” to the point that they can turn a reader like me off fairly quickly — not just because the content can sometimes be unrealistic and/or irrelevant to my job situation (i.e. turn off your email for a few hours or shut your office door to visitors for the day!), but also because the tone is often heavy-handed, with a “one method fits all” approach where oftentimes, you are made to feel like something is wrong with you if you don’t follow the writer’s advice. With this book, I didn’t get that vibe at all — in fact, I got the opposite vibe in that the emphasis was on how everyone’s situation is different and to do what works best for you (or not). As I’ve said before, I can’t stand “overly preachy” books, especially ones with what I perceive as a pretentious tone that essentially try to guilt-trip the reader towards a particular direction, so it was refreshing to see that this one didn’t take that route.
  
  Overall, I did like this book, but as I mentioned above, I definitely would’ve liked it better if Kondo had been the sole author. Though I’m not a Marie Kondo fanatic like my friend, I do have a lot of admiration and respect for her work and appreciate what she has been able to achieve over the last decade. And while the effectiveness of her methods is subjective in that it might or might not be a right fit for certain people, I think what she has going for her (and why her methods are easier to accept) is her positive attitude (with a focus on joyfulness) as well as her non-aggressive approach that is very different from what we may be used to here in the United States. If Kondo does write another book at some point, I look forward to reading it. Meanwhile though, I should probably go check out her show on Netflix (I’m not a huge TV watcher anymore nowadays, as I don’t have the time that I used to, but I’m willing to make an exception in this case).
• 
  Katie

  The humor of reading this while being quarantined at home is not lost on me. It may seem irrelevant to read about sparking joy at work when you’re not physically in the office, but I find that many of these principles still apply. My desk right now is actually a dining table, which I’m also using as my mask sewing area. It’s cluttered and distracting. Kondo states that keeping a clean workspace allows you to focus better on your work, and I find that to be true now more than ever when I’m having to make due with the only functional work areas I have.
  
  Likewise, there is a lot of useful information in here about having more effective meetings, organizing your digital files, and how to maintain a productive schedule. Many points are carried over from Kondo’s previous books, so if you’ve read those already, there isn’t a ton of new material here, but I still found it to be a worthwhile read and reminder about how to keep my life tidy amidst chaos.
  
  See more of my reviews:
  Blog //
  Instagram
• 
  Kelly

  For white collar workers, primarily, but there are a lot of good takeaways here about what it means to have joy at work. If you liked Kondo's Tidying Up, you'll dig this.
• 
  Soha Ashraf

  If you have adopted the KonMari method, then you don't need to be going through this book; it essentially extends this method to the workspace.
• 
  Ben Rogers

  REALLY basic book. I am really unimpressed.
  
  Like, basic self-help knowledge.
  Then, a TON of BOOMER computer how-to's.
  Like how to empty your email. HOW TO CREATE DESKTOP FOLDERS?!?!?!?!?
  
  Who is this written for, Kondo?!
  
  Also, PUBLISHER, who releases an "AT WORK" book now!?!?
  I would have postponed the release of this.
  
  Very disappointed.
  
  2/5
• 
  Emily

  Big thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC!
  
  Marie Kondo again writes a wholly accessible and applicable self-help book! Despite being a college student not yet in the professional scene, I still found the advice and tips helpful, especially within the realm of digital tidying up! I am someone who considers herself a bit like Marie, in that we both enjoy keeping only what (in my case, think) we need. This book helped me see that while yes, I may be able to find all my things rather quickly, I am still debilitating myself by holding onto everything. A very easy to read and giftable book that is sure to help everyone in some way!
  
• 
  Kendra

  Reading Marie's books just soothes me, okay?
• 
  Plateresca

  I started listening to
  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, then saw this book, and as I was at the same time wondering what to do about my email clutter, I made a pause to listen to this one.
  
  And I'm more or less happy with the book's solution to the email problem, so fine, thanks :)
  
  Otherwise, one must note that this book is by Marie and another guy; she mostly speaks about physical clutter, and I'd say that if you read her book on tidying up, you can just skip this one and apply the same principles, - especially if you don't work in an office with other people. The other guy, Scott Sonenshein, speaks about digital things, and I've heard most of those: hide your phone, don't multi-task, etc.
  
  But still, the book did have some useful tips, and I have to listen to something when doing a particular kind of boring mechanical work anyway, so :)
• 
  Leah

  This book did an amazing job motivating me and making me take action cleaning up my digital clutter! I cleaned up my entire email inbox, and my hard drive, my desk, and how I go forward maintaining less clutter. A tidy workspace is a tidy mind :)
  
  Marie Kondo also has great advice on keeping the right mindset. She has really great tips.
  
  Way too corporate for me though lol organizing teams, your social network, meetings. The title does say "Joy at Work" though so I can't complain haha
  
  Marie gives great advice to pile like things together to see how much you really have of one thing. I had approx 100 pens in my desk drawer and I finally got rid of 80% of them! Also, I didn't even realize I had 8 white outs, and 6 scissors lol Why do I need so many? I don't... so I gave them away to where someone will actually use them.
• 
  Anna

  Absurd as it sounds, Marie Kondo seems like a kindred spirit to me as I have a similar love of tidying. Although my working-from-home desk is already arranged neatly (left to right: lamp, ring binder of notes, pencil, laptop & peripherals, 2 coasters) I enjoyed reading her advice on workplace tidying. Unlike her previous books, this one is co-written with someone else: Scott Soneshein, a US business school professor. His chapters of the book reminded me quite a lot of Cal Newport's
  A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload. The latter makes appeals to productivity rather than joy but has a very similar streamlining ethos. The chapters on electronic tidying and not letting email take over your job repeat much the same advice as Newport's book. In both cases, there is an implicit critique of capitalism in the advice on how individuals can cope with the pressures of work.
  
  
  Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life is careful to caveat its advice on discarding emails, files, meetings, roles, etc that do not spark joy, as it is not realistic to expect every single thing in a job to inspire happiness. I would love to skip nearly all meetings on the grounds of them not sparking joy, but this is not generally considered sufficient pretext. One boon of remote working, though, is the ability to treat tedious meetings as a boring background podcast and do other things at the same time. During in-person meetings of the past I ended up doodling and occasionally passing notes to a similarly bored colleague. The suggestion to consider what you're getting out of any given meeting is definitely sensible. Similarly good is the advice to get rid of business cards, unnecessary decisions, and pointless tasks, within the constraints of your role of course.
  
  As for a whole job that doesn't spark joy, the reader is cautioned to consider carefully which parts of it are bad as you may not be able to find something better. That said, I highly recommend leaving an intensely stressful academic post that sparks nothing but dread; I was lucky enough to eventually find something much better. Moreover, I found the advice on making a team function better a bit over-optimistic, having worked in several deeply dysfunctional teams. When that dysfunction is pervasive and comes from above, there is a limited amount a junior employee can do to improve the situation. If you try, in my experience, you get a huge amount of work dumped on you that more senior, better paid people should be doing. This exhausts you and changes nothing.
  
  While the whole book hangs together well, Marie Kondo's chapters are definitely more enjoyable. In part this is because she covers areas that the individual genuinely has control over, such as clutter on your desk, computer, and phone. Scott Sonenshein mostly covers areas in which scope for improvement of individual experience will be limited by the job and organisation worked for. This is not to say that his advice is bad, just that applying it is often likely to be difficult.
  
  I am also in principle sceptical of finding joy in paid work. I consider my work interesting and take pride in completing tasks correctly, but ultimately would rather be asleep or reading. My role is not public-facing so I do not consider it my responsibility to perform it joyfully; I am paid to do statistical tasks competently and on time. The book states that every job is essential and that joy at work sparks joy in life. I am more inclined to take the view of David Graeber's
  Bullshit Jobs: A Theory: much work is pointless if not actively destructive and harmful. Even a good job, which I feel lucky to have these days, will include frustrating admin and the occasional annoying colleague. I appreciate the ethos of tidying and improving what you can, but this should really be combined with awareness that much cannot be changed by the individual. So join a union, escape truly toxic workplaces as soon as you can, and warn others about them. I was honest with two people about the nature of my awful academic job, which put them both off applying for it after I'd left. While I enjoyed
  Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life, it promotes the very phenomenon that Frédéric Lordon warns of in
  Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire:
  
  

  Within capitalist organisations, the very function of hierarchical subordination is to assign each individual a defined set task according to the division of labour, namely, to an activity object that each must convert into an object of desire. [...] Subjection, even when it is happy, consists fundamentally in locking employees in a restricted domain of enjoyment.
• 
  Rachel

  As a very tidy person already, I adore Marie Kondo and frequent books about organizational psychologists like Scott Sonenshein. But this book isn’t really for me - it’s for people that have trouble keeping things tidy, and feel like they have no control over their physical and digital workspaces.
  
  For those people, I do think this book can help. Kondo’s “spark joy” message is soft pedaled, probably with the assumption that white collar workers could find it sappy. Still, the advice is practical. Kondo and Sonenshein are clear on personal responsibility and instituting boundaries, and focus mainly on storytelling as a means of getting their points across. For the most part, that works.
  
  For employees that aren’t white collar, don’t have their own work spaces, and have very little in their own personal control, this book will not help you and might even hurt a little. A lot of what is suggested here has to do with the choices we make, which might be a non-starter for a lot of work places.
  
  Still, Kondo and Sonenshein provide lots of small, practical advice that is easy to implement and low-stakes. I came away with a good amount of things to try, and even thinking about digital workspaces differently thanks to Sonenshein’s perspective.
• 
  Scottsdale Public Library

  Mess, disorganization, and a cluttered desk can ruin your joy for your job.
  Some of my biggest take-aways were the strategies to cope with digital clutter and the ways your work environment can help reduce your overall stress levels. KonMari fans who work a desk job will be interested in the stories, studies, and strategies shared by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein that make for a more productive work environment. - Michelle V.
• 
  Viola

  Daudz vērtīgu padomu, galvenais, centies atrast darbu, kas tev patīk un nekrāj lieku drazu.
• 
  Tuti

  fun to read & useful - inspires you to tidy not only your desk (i found the idea to keep no paper too radical at first, but helpful then!) - but also your decisions, your projects & your meetings.
• 
  Krystelle Fitzpatrick

  I think that most of the ideas in this book have already been propounded in Marie Kondo's former books, and this is much of the same, but targeted toward the workplace. There are some nice tips and hints to incorporate here if you have an office job, which seems to be a decreasing luxury in the modern world, but there's not too much in here that was new material.
  
  I find that the methods put forward in all her books are quite effective and helpful if they're something you have the time for. The idea of 'sparking joy' is a very sweet thing, and it helps to clarify what is and isn't helpful to keep in your life. However, if you've read one, you're getting close to having read them all. The digital application of tidying up is nice to see as an aside and gives some weight to the idea of a tidy desktop and simplifying your digital space too, but besides that, there's not much new to pick up.
• 
  Elizabeth

  Pretty basic stuff. Only a few chapters are by Marie Kondo. The rest are quick hits on a lot of topics that don’t currently apply to me.
• 
  Karl Hallbjörnsson

  Ekki mjög satisfying. Rosa mikið corpo-worship og frekar useless leiðbeiningar um það hvernig maður tekur til í tölvunni sinni. Hver er markhópurinn hérna, amma mín? Alveg valid að það sé örugglega bærilegra að vinna þegar maður hefur frekar hreint í kringum sig en þetta er ekki ráð sem ég þurfti að lesa bók til að uppgötva
• 
  Charity

  It took me a couple of days to read this, since I kept getting up in the middle of it to organize something in my office. Which I suppose is a good testament to the strength of her method.
  
  If you have never read Marie Kondo before, this is a great book to start with, especially if you are a blue collar worker. She focuses a lot on group teamwork and how to spark joy together at the office, in cleaning your office space, and delegating tasks; her co-writer also talks about this, and how to organize e-mails, make your time more efficient, etc. Like many other reviewers, I found Marie's sections of the book warmer and more likable than Scott's, simply because I'm so used to her way of communicating. She likes to spark joy in the reader.
  
  If you've read her before, there's not a ton of new information here specifically about office organization, but there were a few things, especially in the last chapter, that leapt out at me -- things she learned from her husband's work techniques that really made me think. It's as much about having an uncluttered mind and clear (non-abstract, but specific) purpose as it is an uncluttered desk. One thing he recommends is to prioritize your people -- he focuses on his family first and everyone else second. I think there's some truth in that, we often take those we love most for granted and waste energy and mental resources trying to make other people like us... who won't, and may never like us.
  
  Marie said she was hesitant to expand her business, in case people hated her. Her therapist said, "They already hate you." (He tells that to everyone.) So she Googled herself, found an article on "Why we hate Marie Kondo," and... went ahead and expanded her business. Good for her.
  
  Also, if you hate Marie, you don't really understand her message. It's not about dumping your books in a landfill. It's about ONLY OWNING THINGS THAT GIVE YOU JOY.
• 
  Donna Craig

  A quick and simple (not to be confused with easy, necessarily) plan to tidy up your workspace and bring joy to your work life.
  
  I’m an enormous fan of Marie Kondo. One might be justified in saying I love her. I’ve read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up at least six times. Scott Sonenshein is a successful author as well, although unfamiliar to me. I really liked his parts of this book. I think I will look into reading his book, Stretch.
  
  I work in my home, but I still found this stuff really useful. I’ll be tidying up my work area and my computer according to their advice. It’s a simple system that leaves you totally able to maintain it in a minimal amount of regular time. Just like Kondo’s first book. I love the transformation she wrought on my home, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the two of them will do with my work.
  
  Anyone wanna come look at my closet? I’ve maintained the tidiness for at least a few years now. Easy peasy.
• 
  Петър Стойков

  Мари Кондо е очарователно малко аутистче и първата й книга
  Магията на подреждането е очарователна и малка също като нея - съдържа практически само една гениална идея и пояснения за прилагането й. В това е целия й чар, затова е толкова уникално полезна.
  
  Маркетинговият звяр на ме��дународния й успех обаче не спи и я натиска да пише още книги, което я отвежда все по-далеч от това, което й донесе първоначалния успех. Първата й книга беше вдъхновена и изпълнена с идеите, които Кондо проповядва в нея - простота, стил и изящество. С размиването им се размива и стилът на настоящата книга, която отгоре на всичко е в съавторство с някакъв калъф.
• 
  Sonali Dabade

  I really liked reading this book!
  
  *** UPDATE ***
  
  Full review is now up on my YouTube channel:
  
  
  https://youtu.be/rp0LzqgXkBw
• 
  Molly Lackey

  Helpful in more ways than I was expecting. Some of this will be difficult (impossible?) to apply at my present workplace (archives are intrinsically "anti-tidy," I think), but a lot of the stuff about meetings, time, and better explaining to yourself what you do/don't like about a job was insightful. Definitely gave me some good stuff to think about with a relocation (and attendant giant question-mark over my future) looming over me this summer. Would probably be a great "get my boss to read and talk about" book for a lot of people.
• 
  Kira

  I absolutely adore Marie Kondo and this collaboration with Scott Sonenshein was just wonderful. Joy at Work is a very interesting read for those who are looking to be more productive in their work life and Marie Kondo's 'Konmari' method provides an easy, thoughtful way to do so. I really enjoyed the parts of this book about digital minimalism which were a collaborative effort between the two authors and felt inspired to minimise my own digital life through this.
  
  Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.
  
  
• 
  Anne (ReadEatGameRepeat)

  I thought this was an interesting and motivating book. Okay so confession time, this book arrived addressed to me along with other books I did order, but I did not order this book at all. I contacted the place I ordered the book from and they said I didn't have to return it so I decided to keep it and read it. This was actually a pretty quick read and I do think I got something from it even though right now I'm not actually working I'm looking forward to applying these lessons to my own space when I get back to uni for my Master thesis. I do love both the writers, they both have an interesting voice and I thought it was interesting that they had both anecdotes but also actual research about the psychology of tidying up and how being organized helps you in different ways. Should I ever be in the position to get a house I will probably pick up some of these books to read and learn from.
  Although this is not an amazing book (probably because of the nature of it - I mean its a non-fiction about tidying) I do think I'll re-read it whenever I do actually get a job (someone please not-hate me enough to hire me - I swear I'm semi competent).
• 
  Vanya Prodanova

  Няма по-добро време от годината за Мари Кондо от декември. По това време ме хващат лудите за разчистване, та, идеален момент да я прочета. Горката ми техника преживя сериозно разчистване тези два дни, докато я четох книгата, че ще и види още малко като стигна до оправянето на паролите и социалните мрежи. :Р
  
  Голяма част от книгата реално не е от Мари Кондо, а от нейния съавтор - Scott Sonenshein, но не беше лоша като цяло. Повечето неща, който се интересува от подреждане и разчистване, вероятно ги е чувал накуп на други места, но на мен ми беше приятно да ги видя предадени чрез техните думи.
  
  Любимата ми част беше като се споменава разчистването на чисто дигиталната ти дата, на което аз съм върл фен, защото отричането, че истинският живот не е на компютъра ти - е живот в заблуждение. Всички вече имаме дигитален живот и няма да навреди да го разчистваме и него ако искаме да не се подлудим в някакъв момент.
  
  Приятна книжка определено, вдъхновя да разчистиш, какво повече да искаш. :)
• 
  Lisa (Remarkablylisa)

  Kind of weird time for me to read this when I'm working from home because of COVID-19 but it helped remind me that i need to clean my desk thoroughly. the rest of the advice unfortunately does not apply to me. Perfect for a working parent, someone who is involved in a lot of things, or someone with a need to network with others.
• 
  Ying Ying

  I loved the book, especially the end of the book. The author’s love of organizing things is just contagious. I also feel the joy when everything is clean and neat; even the idea of things being clean and neat is sexy.
  Quite a few tips to take away for life: including making your controllable space a place of joy, and being grateful for things that serve us day to day.