Marie Kondo's Latest Guide: Find Joy at Work

It's important to get in the habit of expressing gratitude for what you do have during these trying times, because there definitely are silver linings — like the number of hours that people are saving in commutes. And just to be able to focus without the distraction of work colleagues coming in and interrupting could really help you get into what psychologists call the “state of flow,” where you're so immersed in your work that you kind of zone out what's going on around you. It's a very joyful experience, and it's hard to get into if every 15 minutes someone stops by your desk and asks you a question.

Minimize email distractions

Turn off email notifications; the research says that when you have a distraction like that it could take as much as 26 minutes to return to where your brain left off. Then a few times a day you can check your email. Do it in batches, in an efficient way, and that tends to allow you to focus and make the most out of your non-email time.

You can tell the people you work with they can contact you with a phone call or text message when something is urgent. But “urgent” should have a pretty high standard, like, We need to hear from you within the hour.

Learn what's necessary for your job

There's probably a lot of stuff that we do on a day-to-day basis at work that probably isn't worth doing for a variety of reasons. For instance, I think what we're seeing right now with people working from home is that a lot of recurring meetings, which are so easy to schedule because of digital technology, are simply being replaced by a five-minute email.

If we can take those learnings when we come out of this crisis and go back to the office, and not return to some of these practices — like when we just have meetings because every week we've always had them, even if we have nothing to talk about — and focus on what's really essential to getting things done, we can work more joyfully.

Find joy in your daily tasks

There's an exercise in the book that involves writing down each of your job's tasks on an index card, then evaluating them in terms of how they relate to your ideal work life. I think a lot of people who go through this exercise are going to learn that there are changes that they want to make to their jobs, and some, in the later stages of their work lives, are going to say, I fell short of what I really wanted to get out of my career. But it's not too late to make a change.

Most people are going to spend just short of 100,000 hours in their careers working. That's a lot of time to be doing something that doesn't bring you joy.