When it comes to pop culture phenomena, not many would have guessed that the first one of 2019 would come in the form of Japanese home and organizing consultant Marie Kondo. From crowded home full of childhood relics, to closets filled with unused shoes and bags, to bookshelves brimming with dusty paperbacks and hardcovers, people are embracing her signature decluttering method known as KonMari (learn more about it here) full force. Full disclosure: I am one of these people.

So, after KonMari’ing my own home and life, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a way to channel some of Kondo’s minimalism into the everyday workflow and spark some joy…or at least some productivity for the modern professional.

Turns out, digital purging can be just as difficult as the purging encouraged by Kondo and her acolytes. Between a flooded inbox, a never-ending to-do list, and a bottomless amount of files in team drives, simplifying a workflow can seem like an impossible task.

Luckily, technology has made digital KonMari’ing a whole lot easier than cleansing your entire home. With these three tools you’ll be a digital KonMari expert in no time.

Slack

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Slack has basically taken over the world as the prime team communication and collaboration tool. And it isn’t hard to see why. It’s great for having a lot of conversations between individuals, small groups, or full teams at the same time. Direct messaging and increased communications grant you the ability to align on ideas instantly, which means real work can get done.

However, that can only happen if the chats are focused. With its open communication platform, some have noted that Slack can either be a productivity tool or a productivity hurdle. It’s true that while more access to your teammates can lead to productivity, it can also lead you down bottomless discussion rabbit holes.

There are ways, however, for you to work around the distractions posed by Slack.

For example:

• Quickly catch up on all of your channels’ conversations using the “All Unread” function.
• Tame your slack notifications by turning off the always urgent red dot and having push notifications appear only when you are mentioned directly.
• Enable e-mail notifications rounding up all channel activities that you may have missed if you’ve been away for a while.

For you to declutter your Slack you may have to fall back on e-mail (especially in that last example), but even then, its messaging capabilities will still help you simplify your inbox in a way that would make Kondo proud.

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Front

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What’s that they say about two heads are better than one? Well, that can be applied to e-mail inboxes too! Launched in 2013, Front bills itself as your team inbox.

By combining the inboxes of engineers, accountants, sales reps, and customer service agents, Front aims to change the ways teams communicate and collaborate. With it, you can easily have conversations and pull insights from customers, partners, and colleagues and make decisions faster.

Sharing an inbox with your team may sound like the exact opposite of what a digital KonMari entails. However, in combining all of your personal and work inboxes in one place (which you can do with Front) you won’t have to switch between your team e-mail in Front and your own inbox in Gmail or Outlook to get work done. When you don’t have to swipe between windows and applications, productivity and teamwork can happen under one happy roof.

But, like physical houses, having too many things in one home can quickly turn into an overwhelming mess. Knowing this, Front has a number of features that will help you keep your home in order à la KonMari.

For example:

• Assign messages to your fellow teammates so there is no longer any confusion on who is following up with what.
• A snooze function for e-mails that don’t warrant an immediate response.
• Save time by using canned responses for e-mails that you repeatedly send to customers or clients (think of them as a saved templated you can tweak and customize to each recipient).
• Filter messages with tags so you and your team can clearly see which project or subject each message falls under.

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Ruum by SAP

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Ruum is on a mission to streamline collaboration and project management in the cloud, which means more flexibility for you and your team regardless of location and project size. With Ruum, managing tasks, timelines, files, and team members can be as easy as sending an e-mail — and it all happens in one platform.

Plus, you get your own personal A.I. assistant when you use Ruum. Ada, Ruum’s project management A.I. takes over tasks like follow-up e-mails, daily updates on project status, and other important changes. Essentially, Ada makes sure that you don’t miss a thing when it comes to your projects, so that you can spend less time on clearing the clutter from your daily workflow and more time on the big picture.

But Ada isn’t the only Ruum feature that can help you KonMari your digital life. There are a plethora of other features in Ruum that can help you achieve all of your workflow goals.

For example:

• House and organize multiple projects that fall under the same umbrella and goal in Project Groups.
• Archive your projects so that your Ruum Lobby is clean and clear, but your previous work is always one click away if you need to refer back to it.
• Keep track of all project progress and deadlines while holding team members accountable with the Timeline feature.
• Collect and consolidate team input on projects with Polls, so no one feels left behind or forgotten as your project gains steam.
• Centralize all communications related to your project in one place by uploading and attaching important and relavant e-mails for your entire team to access instead of constantly forwarding messages and risk having them buried in inboxes.

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Sign up for free and spark joy for your team here.

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