Danielle West's Key Ideas from Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life
by Marie Kondo, Scott Sonenshein

Before you get started tidying up, it is a good idea to have an effective plan in place. 

• Visualize Your Ideal Work-Life.
• Know where everything belongs.

When you encounter anything, ask yourself:

• Does it spark joy?
• Is it needed for work or play?
• Any future utility that it provides?

Books can provide us with knowledge and inspiration but can also become a barrier to tidying. Although a full bookshelf can seem fulfilling, we might keep books for the wrong reasons – like impressing others…

Gather all your books into one space and ask yourself those 3 earlier key questions: Does it spark joy, is it needed for work and will it lead to future utility?

If you find you cannot answer any of those questions, then it might be time to let it go!

1. The pending ones

These are the ones that require future action. Think outstanding bills and things like proposals that must be reviewed.

2. The ones we MUST keep

Most workplaces will have things that are required by law – these might be long-term contracts or legislation. 

3. The ones we WANT TO keep

These might spark joy or be valuable for other purposes. You need to be brutal here, however. If they get in your way and are not worth it then get rid!

Make clear but simple categories which work for you. If you are a designer maybe break everything down by client and then have a master admin folder for general bits. If you do a lot of ad-hoc work maybe a date type filing system might be best? Ask yourself: How do I approach my work and how can I simplify how I obtain things I need?

Regularly maintain a box – whether it be physical or digital – for things which are pending. This is your place to put things when they don’t have a place yet. Think new documents – do not just put everything here though! It is instead a short-term stop-off for documents.

There are usually 3 ways we approach our emails: all of which can lead to problems.

1. Those who stay alert

These are the people who stay alert for inbound emails.

2. The spring cleaners

These are the people who purge their inbox occasionally.

3. The accumulators

These are the people who let emails accumulate and then rely on the search functionality. If your inbox has at least 1000 emails in it then this might be you!

• Firstly, consider those 3 questions we have been using above when deciding what to do with an email.
• Delete anything which does not fulfil the criteria and then begin organizing the remaining ones.
• I would suggest having a reasonable number of folders but no more than 10. Categorize the folders into different sections.
• This is something which should be done daily. When you have a spare second, tidy your emails!

It can be easy to fall into the trap of doing more work than we should. It can be so troublesome that psychologists have coined it “Over-earning”.

We tend to invest lots of energy into things that don’t really matter. We might originally undertake a task to achieve a specific objective, but we can lose sight that we have achieved our goal and instead try to maximize whatever we can get.

Instead of spending time enjoying the rewards, we have earned we instead keep working for the sake of it.

Instead of making time to dive into focusing on one task we instead jump from one seemingly urgent task to the next. We work on auto-pilot and complete assignments based on what has been deemed urgent instead of the important tasks. What usually happens is most tasks become urgent when they are not, and it is no surprise that we feel overwhelmed and suffer the negative consequences because of that.

Multi-taskers tend to be among the least productive people at work. Research suggests that by multi-tasking you could be decreasing your productivity by as much as 40 percent. We can only think of a limited number of things at once: take on too much and you are likely to end up doing a few things poorly rather than one thing especially well.

You do not have to let your schedule get the better of you. Here are some tips on taking control of your schedule:

1. Identify your ‘core tasks’

These are your central, ongoing activities that justify your existence at work.

2. Identify the ‘project tasks

These are the kind of tasks that have a discrete beginning and end.

3. Identify the ‘developmental tasks’

These are the ones that help us learn and grow such as reading, training, and attending conferences.

• Gather all the medium stake and high-stake decisions that you currently or will soon face.
• Look through your pile and put the high-stakes ones to one side. These must be kept!
• Now you’re left with the medium pile. It’s time to find out what is worth keeping.
• Again, ask yourself those 3 important questions.
• In addition to this you should also ask yourself: Is this something someone else can do better or cheaper? If so, delegate the task to someone else!
• Also think, does this need regular involvement and thought? If not, then try your hardest to automate these decisions!

Most of our decisions are ones made with little effort or focus, however, other decisions can be high-stakes and require intense thought and then there are the medium-stake decisions which fall in between and are the ones we are likely to put off as they aren’t as easy to make.

When tidying your decisions follow this process: Forget about the small ones, organize the medium ones and reserve your energy for the large and important ones.

Instead of doing everything perfectly – forget the idea about being a perfectionist and completing everything perfectly, you might be able to cope for a week but after a while, you’ll get fatigued and start doing a poor job on everything. Instead, perfect the jobs that need to be perfected.

That business presentation to a potential client? Get that right! Where to go for lunch with a friend? Who cares? Choose anywhere!

1. Show up

This means not being only physically present but mentally present too. 

2. Come prepared

Read any agendas sent over and bring any information along which might be useful.

3. Put away distractions

Other messages can wait… Give the meeting and its participants your full attention!

4. Speak up

Everyone has something useful to say, do not be afraid to give your thoughts on the issue.

5. Do no harm

It should be a place to spread positivity and ideas, not negativity and gossip.

1. What do you want to accomplish?

Is the meeting even required in the first place?

2. Do you need to invite everyone?

Fewer people but more engagement is better than lots of people with little engagement.

3. Let others know the purpose of the meeting.

Send out an agenda to help others decide if it’s useful for them.

4. Encourage participation.

Meetings are a place to spread and discuss ideas, make sure everyone is heard.

5. Set realistic timelines and keep it short, like 20 minutes.

6. The Endgame

End the meeting summarizing everything that has been discussed, and what is learned.