![]() Kondo’s advice is to get rid of them, and her faith in keeping only the things that “bring us joy” addresses the economic concept of opportunity cost: The mental and physical toll of keeping an unused item around is greater than throwing it out. In my tidying efforts, I find that the sunk-cost fallacy hits harder for new items, because unused items retain more value in resale. The irrationality of this thinking is that people ignore whether an item they own is still useful to them, and whether they’ll actually use or resell it. The money’s spent, an investment has been made, and it makes people irrational because it seems a waste to not use something that one has poured resources into. The term “sunk cost” applies to payments (of time or money) that have already occurred and thus can’t be recovered. In other words, I think the reason Kondo-mania continues is because she has actually hit upon some good solutions to deal with these pervasive mental fallacies.įor example, Kondo aptly attacks what’s called the sunk-cost fallacy. She takes strong stances against these irrational mental habits that govern us. In my reading and practice of the eponymous “KonMari Method,” I found that Kondo does implictly touch on some important behavioral economics concepts and cognitive biases that prevent us from being tidy. Harford says that the clutter that piles up in apartments is a product of people’s cognitive blunders. Financial Times columnist Tim Harford agrees that Kondo’s methods are not only intuitive, but compelling to economists. Seeing as an entire branch of economics studies exactly that, it’s no wonder that economists have a particular interest in her advice. Running through Kondo’s best advice and most of her book is the argument about the anxiety-induced limits of human decision-making. Why do people have so much trouble throwing things out? Turns out, the answer lies in people’s heads. Most wouldn’t even notice if some of those items are gone, she argues, but the problem is that throwing things out and putting belongings in the right place requires jumping through some psychological hoops. This number is astonishing, but a key element of Kondo’s argument is that hardly anyone is aware of how many items he or she owns. In the introduction of her book (and several times throughout), Kondo quantifies the power of her advice-she estimates that she’s helped her clients (a group that doesn’t include her countless readers) dispose of no fewer than a million items. During Kondo’s AMA on Reddit, one superfan asked her how to teach her method to children under 10. ![]() A good number of journalists swear by her methods, and effusive referrals of “ She changed my life” abound. (A search for her name in Japanese produces a similar result, though her book was originally published in 2010.) If Google searches are any indication, interest in tidying is also at an all-time high, and some of this interest must be attributed to the rise in Kondo’s method-which is to hold onto only items that “bring joy.” Following the purge, Kondo provides clear directions for how to store all your belongings in a way that makes them easily accessible and hard to mess up. Though Kondo’s book was published in English in October of last year, a search on Google Trends still puts interest in her near an all-time high. Unlike most self-help books, there are no extraneous words, no pandering-the lack of “wink wink” gesturing reads as an appealing, authentic statement. Direct and devoid of clutter, this sentence rings true to her philosophy. This is the ambitious first sentence of Marie Kondo’s best-selling manifesto, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. “In this book, I have summed up how to put your space in order in a way that will change your life forever.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |