Career Lessons from Marie Kondo

If you are still uninitiated to KonMari system, you have been missing out on a huge cultural trend. Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant, started a massive movement of de-cluttering with her 2014 book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”, with the idea that clearing your physical space leads to an overall sense of lightness, relief and joy.

What does it have to do with your career, you ask?
 
You see, the way you do one thing is the way you do all things.
 
You may argue that while one aspect of your life may look like a mess (say, career, or an important relationship), other aspects are perfectly in order, thankyouverymuch. What is more likely, though, is that the same pattern may have different expressions in various areas of your life. Key idea: if you find a way to fix a damaging pattern in one area of your life, it will be resolved in other areas as well.
 
I watched Marie Kondo’s Netflix show “Tidying up with Marie Kondo” just to see whether it captures this transfer of patterns, and how home decluttering could help with career de-cluttering and advancement.
 
1. Large-scale real-life transformations demand your uncompromising commitment to your vision.
 
What did not happen on Kondo’s home decluttering show: large cleaning crews, additional budgets for the project, or magical clutter evaporation. What did happen: the families made a commitment to the de-cluttering process, were willing to do the dirty work, and allowed themselves experience joy on this taxing journey.
 
Let’s transfer this to your career transition, which may currently look messy. a) Make the career transition your priority, and for the time-being, give your energy only to whatever supports this transition. b) Do the work: make the calls, send in the proposals, ask for what you need, and offer what you have. c) Notice what feels joyful as you’re going through the grind, and follow those sparks. If your heart says “no”, try something different.
 
2. Small steps yield big results over time.
 
Much like clearing house clutter, career mess is often cleaned up one small part at a time. Study for 20 minutes a day every day, no matter what, for that professional certificate you’ve always wanted. I know you are busy, but you can free up 20 minutes a day. You can. Reach out to just one person per day if you need to start networking. Dramatic leaps may sound exciting, but also overwhelming, so we end up doing nothing. In case of career growth, something is better than nothing. Once you begin making some progress, it will be easier to create more time, because the task won’t seem insurmountable anymore.
 
3. When feeling overwhelmed or uncertain, use joy as your marker.
Marie Kondo talks about a small, distinctive impulse of joy that we experience (or don’t experience) when we come in contact with something. If you take the element of joy out of Kondo’s system, the whole thing falls apart, and you’re back to the drudgery of cleaning up a mess. It sounds like common sense, which is why Marie Kondo’s system feels so accessible and practical: use joy as a marker if you want to end up doing the work (or living in a place, or being in a relationship) where you experience joy as a “baseline normal”.

Ultimately, the purpose of this whole article was just to ask you this: Do you know what joy feels like in your body? How often do you experience joy? What can you let go of in various areas of your life to make room for more joy?

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