There are many benefits to tidying up and decluttering our lives, as Marie Kondo has successfully demonstrated. But what is missing? Marie Kondo focuses on physical clutter, but many of us are struggling more with mental clutter. What if we took the basic idea of tidying and applied it to not just our physical world but to everything? Getting Things Done® (GTD®) does exactly that – by decluttering the mind, we have better mental clarity and can focus better on the more important things.
What is Marie Kondo Missing?
by Todd Brown
Like what you are reading? Sign up to our Newsletter for regular updates.
Hi Todd. I’m agree with your comments, but I want to add some thoughts. Having practising for years both methods (Kondo for my home GTD for everything ;)) I think that for the house Kondo is tremendously useful, BUT GTD have the most powerful tool: “someday/maybe” file, I mean; sometimes I really don’t know what to do with a thing or a thought and I don’t feel like deciding at that time, what GTD gives is a consistent review system for not having that thing or thought in my mind, a system that really works and I can trust. And that is magic too.
Hi Barbara – great, many thanks for that. I think you’re right that the someday/maybe inventory is very powerful. In effect, it gives us a place to put things that we are not yet ready to make decisions about, but are committed to reviewing regularly to determine whether we want to make them actionable in the future. No real equivalent of that in Marie Kondo’s system that I’ve seen. That may be down to the fact that she puts so much emphasis on deciding *now* what each physical thing means. Does it spark joy? If not, then it goes. But of course if a force that decision when I’m not ready to make it, it may be that I’ll get rid of something I should be holding on to.