Marie Kondo’s Tidying Method Applied To Software Design

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Intro

I often find it interesting to take principles from other fields and see how they can be applied to software. After watching Marie Kondo’s Netflix series I decided to do this with her method.

What I’ll do is define her principles (as I understand them), generalize the principles, and then see how they can be applied to software engineering.

Here’s what I got:

Principles of Marie Kondo’s Method

Goals and Goal Alignment

• The goal of life is joy.
• Release all items, except the ones that “spark” joy.

Organizing

• Similar items are to be placed in the same space.
• When looking into a space, all items are to be immediately understood.

Motivation

• Make a pile of all your clothes (and other items) to experience the full extent of the problem.
• Finish the process quickly to experience the full extent of the improvement.

Transitions

• Make transitions category (clothes, books, etc) by category
• When done with a category, move to the next one.