Joy at Work

It’s not obvious to me how to even try to charitably review this book, which at least is very earnest in its intentions — a blatant mashup of two authors who went varying levels of viral in the self-help genre, combining forces to juice sales. I went in with low expectations — I legitimately liked The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, even with its flaws, and I am cynical but hopeful for most work-life balance type books. But there was nothing useful here; it is the same drivel that feels instantly dated, from talking about “organizing your desktop by moving files and emails into dedicated folders” to “thanking recurring meetings for their service and deleting them from your calendar”. The most pragmatic parts of the book were the authors’ attempts at redefining GTD. and the only mercy it had was that it was relatively unpadded (sitting at around four hours on the unabridged audiobook).