Joy at Work is a helpful guide that empowers professionals to declutter their workspaces and minds, unlocking the potential for productivity and happiness. Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein skillfully blend the renowned KonMari Method with cutting-edge research, offering practical strategies and inspiring stories to help readers achieve career progress, enhanced well-being, and a renewed joy in their work.

I’m a fan of Marie Kondo even though she has now recently admitted she doesn’t stick to her methods as much anymore! Ha! I was hoping for this version of her book to give me some eye opening tips, but having read the original and also watching the show, there wasn’t really anything that was brand new and groundbreaking. It was still an enjoyable, quick read though. Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!

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.

Marie Kondo is a hit or miss. I'm not a fan of everything she recommends but she does give some helpful tips that I enjoy.

Marie Kondo is at it again with her wisdom towards decluttering your physical space in order to declutter your mental space. This time, she focuses on work and being able to bring the joy to your job site. I’m excited to try these techniques to bring more peace and productivity to my work day!

I received an ARC of this book, but all opinions are my own.

I will read (or watch) anything relating to Marie Kondo. Joy at Work, her latest book, is admittedly not her strongest, but I still think there is a time and a place for it. Its basic premise is that mess, disorganization, and a cluttered office environment can ruin your joy for your job. One of my biggest take-aways related to digital clutter and strategies for cleaning up one's digital working environment. No more icon-packed desktop screen!

I enjoyed her first 2 books, life Changing Magic of Tidying and Spark Joy, This book was equally enjoyable and inspirational. I felt motivated to tackle the clutter that was my professional life and environment and was able to reevaluate my priorities and quit the job that had long since stopped sparking joy for me and am now pursuing a new path that truly makes me happy. I recommend this book for anyone who could use a kick start in their work life or anyone who is feeling overwhelmed or stuck in their career.

I appreciated the application of the KonMari method to work items, especially in a way that one might not think about it, such as with meetings, teams, networks, digital items, etc. This is a useful book but if you've already read Marie Kondo's other works, you could probably apply it here without reading the book. However, if you haven't and you're struggling with your work, this provides a pretty comprehensive overview of everything.

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!

I found this book really helpful in organizing my work and headspace at work. Especially with the pandemic, so many things have piled up and needed the motivation to clear out extraneous papers, files, and work things. This book provided much needed motivation and clarity!

If you are a Marie Kondo fan, this is the natural progression of tidying up. She has a co author who is an Organizational Psychologist. I felt as if the advice was not only doable but timely. There is a lot more than asking yourself if your work sparks joy and this book explores that idea as well as giving practical advice on how to declutter all areas of your work life.

Available now: Joy at Word with Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein

****4/5 stars: Liked it. It's good for the soul - and career - to stay joyful at work and Marie Kondo with Scott Sonenshein have some great tips.

Recommended readers:

Professionals at any stage in their career
If you're feeling overwhelmed at work
If you like a strong female lead who challenges society

REVIEW FROM BOOKS FOR HER:

Excellent timing to write Joy at Work! Especially now after COVID-19 has hit and many are dealing with even more stress and challenging priorities - Joy at Work helps identify some of the stress in clutter - from your inbox, to your desk to your calendar.

Just as she did with Spark Joy and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo teams up with Scott Sonenshein to tidy up your work life. It's a great read for any professional at any point in their career.

Available now: Joy at Word with Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein

Overall this book was disappointing to me. It was very basic and I was looking for something more. I did really appreciate the section on tidying your decisions though.

Joy At Work is similar to other bodies of work from Marie Kondo. This book is geared more toward organization when it comes to work life. I've never been a very organized person but I really enjoyed to practical advice from this little book. I would completely recommend it.

Great for fans of Marie Kondo, and those wanting to feel the same kind of peace and control at work.

I am by no means a Marie Kondo level tidier, but I do think I've naturally applied a lot of her ideas in my life. I'm the person my family asks when they can't find something, the person who has less than 10 emails unread, and the person who uses my planner religiously. In most aspects of my life, I think Marie Kondo would approve (or at least say is good enough?).
Going through this book, I thought this wouldn't be all that applicable to me. After all, this is about the workplace and I'm only a student, I don't even have a job or a workplace. What could I possibly gain?
Yet, this book has without a doubt given me a new perspective especially with technology and digital data. It's too easy to want to save every picture. I have been clearing my hard drive sorting through iphone photos, only to find myself not deleting old screenshots of no importance.
As a self-proclaimed book lover/reader/book fanatic there's a pretty interesting section of Marie Kondo's belief of how to deal with books (particularly at the workplace). I love the sight of a full bookshelf so much, it's hard to agree with her methods. However, I think us readers do have more incentive to read those books on our shelves (despite how much we all joke about our tbr piles) many books do get read each year. However, as someone who cherishes physical copies, yet almost never rereads books, it's hard to figure out exactly where I lie. (Not to mention books are expensive and can be hard to simply donate or get rid of when you still feel connected to their stories). Therefore, I decided to listen to Kondo's advice that "If books spark joy for you, then the correct choice is to keep as any as you want with confidence."
As much as I think this book is a great way for people to learn how to tidy up. If you don't need all the details to let me help you out:
TLDR: Just ask yourself:
1. Is it important? (Do you NEED (like are you actually required to keep this) for work)
2. Does it really spark joy?
3. Just actually schedule a time to do a deep clean up.
Though this not the kinds of books I usually pick up, this was definitely worth a read!

I love minimalism, and have successfully used the KonMari method in my home, even with my books. I learned a thing or two from <i>Joy at Work</i> as well.

I am grateful to love my job and coworkers, and tend to meet deadlines without too much stress. But things can always be better! I tried the methods for inbox decluttering, and greatly simplified my inbox folders and tags. It's been effective in shaving time and annoyance off my day.

I'm also interested in trying a version of Takumi Kawahara's (Kondo's husband and KonMari Media cofounder) practice of every two weeks taking time to reflect on why he works, what he hopes to achieve, and what his ideal work life is. He uses that information to prioritize daily tasks. That's quite a mindfulness practice, and one I think could be useful when things get most frustrating or overwhelming at work.

One section in particular felt like it was a direct response to all the people who were scandalized about getting rid of the precious books. Chapter three has a subsection "Books: Discover Your Values Through Tidying." I really appreciated it, because I'm also a librarian who loves weeding. Weeding makes things tidy and sparks joy!

"Just like us, books have a peak period in their lives. That's when they should be read, but it's quite common for people to miss that timing. How about you? Do you have any books at work that are past their prime?"

Hm? Well, do you?

Received a free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a huge fan of Marie Kondo and her philosophies and this book didn't disappoint. I do think it would have been more helpful for me before remote work, but there are definitely still lessons that apply to work from home.

I read Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy last year, as well as watched the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and promptly organized my personal life. I learned to identify what "sparks joy" in my life and curated more of it. I discarded things that no longer served a purpose or inspired me, and I put into place a system that has completely changed the way I approach and enjoy my organizational life. However, my desk at work remained a mess and I just didn't feel inspired to tidy up there ... until I read Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein's Joy at Work.

Marie Kondo has teamed up with Scott Sonenshein, author of Stretch (next on my to-read list), to create a book based on their principles, and is designed to inspire you to tidy up your professional life. Those who have read Marie Kondo's other books will recognize and be able to apply the practices mentioned there to their work life, although she does cover them again in Joy at Work for anyone who is unfamiliar with her world-renowned Konmari method. Scott Sonenshein, an organizational psychologist, provides insight in mental organization at work - "tidying up" your time and resources to feel more productive and fulfilled on the job. Together, these two authors have written a handy little guide to making work a more joyful place to be.

After reading Joy at Work, I promptly tidied up my workspace in just one day. I had mounds of paper and clutter that had been left untouched for over three years. By applying the methods covered in Joy at Work, I was able to minimize my work possessions and only keep the stuff that brought me joy and was essential to my job. With my desk so clean and tidy, and my space and mind clear of clutter, I feel renewed and inspired to dive into my work and tackle new projects. I recommend Joy at Work for anyone feeling overwhelmed on the job and in need of a little "pick-me-up" to get their professional life in order and feel inspired again.

It's fantastic to have a book detailing the Kondo method as it specifically pertains to workspaces. Will recommend.