Marie Kondo, the tidying expert and best-selling author, has a new book, “Joy at Work,” that takes her trademarked method to the workplace and encourages readers to find joy there by cleaning their desks, among other things.
Of course, the terrible joke right now is that the coronavirus is the new KonMari, having scoured most businesses more thoroughly than any decluttering plan could by sending its messiest elements — people — home, a turn of events unlikely to lead to much joy, professional or otherwise.
But back to the book.
Can you find joy at work, and is that a good thing? Is it asking too much of a stapler that it spark joy? Is it asking too much of a job?
To a Calvinist or early American, work was the embodiment of Christian principles, and so a duty: work for work’s sake. Joy’s? Not so much.
Marx thought work could be joyous, if the worker felt he or she was represented in the labor. Certainly happiness, if not actual joy, is a buzzword in the new business lexicon, decorating the covers of a flurry of business primers, from the Zappos czar, Tony Hsieh (“Delivering Happiness”), on down.
And more employers have been offering wellness and other happiness-boosting programs and perks, like nap rooms, fitness tracking and meditation (the last especially useful right now).
But the Goopification of the workplace is just a contemporary spin on what has long been a best practice of capitalism, albeit at very specific times.
“Basically, worker happiness becomes an issue anytime the labor market gets tight,” said Charles Duhigg, a former New York Times reporter who studies productivity and is the author of “Smarter Faster Better.” among other books. “Look at Henry Ford. The reason he paid his workers twice as much as everyone else is he figured out it was so hard to train them, he needed a way to keep them.”
A few decades ago, social scientists started measuring happiness and productivity, and what they found, Mr. Duhigg said, is that happier workers are more productive.
Ms. Kondo’s first job out of college was in the sales force of a staffing agency, and she writes of how she floundered initially, finding herself overworked but getting nowhere, among the worst-performing of the 15 new hires that year.
With a desk awash in papers, office equipment, dried-up tea bags and pens with their caps missing, she had lost touch with her “inner tidying geek.” After she snapped to, what followed was a publishing phenomenon.
Lest you think her origin story has nothing to teach you — with your skanky desk drawers lined with soy sauce packets, lint-furred power cords and coffee-stained, crumb-infested keyboard — there is, in fact, some data linking tidiness to professional success.
Ms. Kondo marshals a few studies that show co-workers think neatniks are more trustworthy, intelligent and kind than their slovenly colleagues; and are more likely to be promoted. Tidy workers, basking in the glow of their colleagues’ high estimation, work harder, according to a tenet of social science called the Pygmalion effect, when we excel because others expect us to.
Social science being what it is, the reverse is also true: There are studies that have shown that those with messy desks command higher salaries than their tidy colleagues. There is some empirical proof that a big mess can be the sign of a creative mind, and that a swirl of scurf and funk can give birth to history-changing ideas. Think of Silicon Valley, and the notoriously slovenly offices of early Facebook, sticky with beer. Think of penicillin.
Still, not all messes are physical, and an empty desk doesn’t mean workers aren’t suffering from virtual clutter and chaotic systems. Such messes, like pointless meetings, too much email, too many decisions and lousy in-office communication, are not necessarily of their own making.
Ms. Kondo has gathered studies that show the average worker spends half of his or her day answering emails (amplifying stress levels and untethering their focus) and wastes two and a half hours a week in ineffective meetings, at a cost of $3.7 billion in lost productivity each year. Lost passwords, according to a study of American and British workers, equals a loss in productivity, per employee, of $420 each year. And so forth.
Our own bad habits and the natural entropy of most systems has caused misery and burnout, and attendant self-help books. Ms. Kondo collaborated on this one with Scott Sonenshein, an organizational psychologist, and they take turns explaining how to tidy desks, drawers, meetings (otherwise known as activity clutter), time, inboxes, behaviors and, ultimately, careers.
Throw out random cords, ketchup packets and dried-up pens. Throw out business cards, an outmoded nicety, though many of Ms. Kondo’s Japanese clients believe they are proxies for a person’s soul. Thank them for their information, she suggests instead, and shred them. Stop accumulating snacks, along with airplane minis, apparently an especially American habit.
“Learning about different cultural characteristics is what makes tidying up in other countries so fascinating,” she notes impishly.
Keep your physical desktop clear of everything except that which you’re working on at the moment, as well as your computer and perhaps a plant. In these dark times, an uncluttered surface anticipates the caress of the Clorox wipe.
As for your virtual desktop, clean that up too. You can thank your digital data for its service, as you once did your balled-up socks at home, and let it go. (Maybe backing the most important of it up first.)
Ms. Kondo allows as how it’s a lot to ask of a tape dispenser that it be delightful, and saves that designation (“joy plus”) for personal and decorative items, like a child’s photo or a beautiful crystal.
Sources of joy plus are not always apparent. One company president of Ms. Kondo’s acquaintance displayed a toothbrush set on his desk. It’s not that he thought it was attractive. Rather, it served as a repellent to co-workers who imagined he was about to brush his teeth, and their distance brought him joy.
Attitudes need cleaning, too. Be kind, resolve personal conflicts, say thank you. Tidy your meetings: Don’t pontificate, cut co-workers off or assign blame. Or skip meetings altogether, a tidying technique that would be embraced by panicky introverts and, really, maybe everyone but supervisors.
Tidying such disordered systems may not be possible most workers, for whom happiness at work is measured mostly, Mr. Duhigg said, by how much autonomy they feel they have.
“What matters is having agency,” he said. “As does having one colleague that you feel a connection with, having a boss you don’t dislike and optimally respect, and also feeling like your work has some impact or meaning. People are happier when they feel they have control over their environment. It doesn’t matter if it’s clean or not.”
But Ms. Kondo’s method offers tidying as a metaphor, “a dialogue with yourself,” as she likes to say — and at this moment when no one feels they have control over their environment, it can be bracing.
Clear your head. Be brave. Ms. Kondo writes of her qualms about creating her own social media accounts; she dreaded the trolling that would surely ensue. When a therapist tells her, “Don’t worry, Marie. Plenty of people hate you already,” she Googles herself.
After her website and blog, the highest ranking article she found was: “Why We Hate Marie Kondo.”
“Too often we clutter our minds with our biggest fears,” she writes.
