Order in the time of disorder
At a time when an unprecedented number of people have lost jobs across the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdown and economic recession, Marie Kondo, best-selling author has written Joy at Work ,an extension of her acclaimed Konmari method of decluttering to the workplace. Co-written with organisational psychologist Scott Sonenshein, the self help book offers a panacea to messy desks, never-ending backlogs of emails, packed schedules — tidying up the workplace!
It is evident that Ms Kondo has met more than her fair share of naysayers, for she begins with a review of research that suggests that clean and uncluttered workplaces do everything from boost productivity, increase efficiency, motivate employees and spark creativity. She quotes studies that prove that messy workplaces are bad for health as well as business. Data shows that the search for lost things adds up to an average of one work week per year per employee. In the United States alone, she writes this loss in productivity could mount to about $89 billion annually. Later, Ms Kondo gives examples of people, herself included, who have managed to find greater joy in their jobs because they took a duster, not just to the tops but also underneath their desks at the start of every workday.
Her own example is interesting: Ms Kondo’s first job was in a staffing agency in which she was at the bottom of the heap of new hires that year. The job was challenging and she believed she was underperforming. This made her lose touch with her inner tidying geek until one morning, it came back to life on a cluttered desk. She scrubbed, sorted and cleaned everything in sight before starting work that day and while it didn’t suddenly give her superpowers, it certainly helped her gain focus and motivation for what she was doing.
First things first. How, readers may ask, can reducing clutter in the workplace spark joy? Clutter overwhelms the brain, Mr Sonenshein writes. It hinders our ability to choose and make decisions. By reducing the number of unread mails in one’s inbox, keeping stationery supplies neatly sorted, reducing the time spent on unnecessary tasks and more, one can improve one’s professional life substantially.
The chapters on decluttering and tidying up physical office space, written by Ms Kondo, might seem slightly repetitive to readers familiar with her Konmari method. There are some gems, however. Her rule of thumb for stacks of papers is to discard almost everything!
And if any papers do persist stubbornly on the desk, she advocates stacking them vertically rather than horizontally. Her focus is on organising everything on the desk so that one wastes no time in hunting for it. This, however, does not take into account the diversity of workplaces, especially now when more people find themselves working from home without a designated desk or office. Also, how would this method apply to people in shared office spaces which were trending before the Covid-19 pandemic? The author focuses almost exclusively on people with conventional desks in conventional offices and omits the rest. Thus, the book’s lack of clutter and clean interface works positively and negatively. It allows readers to focus on key takeaways, but perhaps the richness of detail it could have benefited by has been swept away with the clutter, rendering it a little sterile.
In later chapters, Mr Sonenshein advocates simple, doable strategies to declutter digital and professional spaces. He extends and actually improves on the Konmari method. Throughout, the recommended method is to view everything in its entirety (for everyday work tasks, he advocates listing each out on a separate index card), reflect on which of them are essential, productive and joygiving and then work to get rid of the rest. Other ways to reduce time spent on routine tasks are more practical; he advocates letting go of every day decisions like choosing between two brands of printer paper by simply setting up automatic orders of office supplies online. Some strategies (such as not hitting the Reply All tab in emails) aren’t particularly original, others seem impractical, which he occasionally acknowledges. For example, it isn’t easy for a mid-level employee to opt out of a joyless meeting, even if they follow some of the strategies Mr Sonenshein suggests. Another method he advocates is to replace social networks, which reduce efficiency, add little value professionally and make it difficult for people to form meaningful connections with one another, with “high-quality connecting”. Unfortunately, he does not say how one can do this.
Joy at Work could leave readers feeling less than overjoyed about their professional lives, especially now. It assumes the presence of desks and office space to start with, which is not how many people work today. It also assumes readers have complete control of their time in the workplace. Most of all, its timing is unfortunate. The joke going around is that the coronavirus, which has “cleaned up” thousands of jobs is the ultimate Konmari tool gone rogue. At this juncture, many readers might rather celebrate the Joy of (Having) Work, rather than Joy at Work.