Joy at Work by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein

Marie Kondo (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) and Scott Sonenshein (an organizational behavior expert and professor at Rice University) explore “organizing your professional life” in JOY AT WORK – something we all need, especially lately. After an initial chapter on the benefits of “tidying,” or visualizing your ideal work life and creating an environment where you can focus, they offer suggestions around aspects of work like digital work, time, decisions, meetings, and so forth.  It’s a tough philosophy that requires willpower, with one section titled: “Papers: The Basic Rule is Discard Everything.” They cite data that shows that the search for lost things adds up to an average of one work week per year per employee! The authors offer simple, relatively easy to implement suggestions (e.g., store papers upright; make a pending box; beware the scan trap, and so on). JOY AT WORK is a text worth reviewing multiple times. Its final chapter is titled, “How to Spark Even More Joy at Work!” and that one describes work-life balance, including whether you should change your job if it does not spark joy. May your tidying inspire others!