04 Aug 2021

APDO Book Club Reads 2021

One of our most popular blog posts has been Sarah Howley's 'Recommendations from the APDO Book Club', which discussed Sarah Tierney's Making Space (Sandstone Press, 2017), Margareta Magnusson's The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Canongate, 2017), Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner (Text Publishing, 2017), James Clear's Atomic Habits (Random House Business, 2018), Lisa Jewell's The House We Grew Up In (Penguin, 2020), and Beth Kempton's Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year (Piatkus, 2019). In today's blog post, book club founder Sarah (Organising Solutions) and new co-organisers Anne Welsh (Tidy Beginnings) and Nicola Austin (Life of Libra) highlight key themes from the books the club has been discussing in 2021. It's August already, so we've had 7 meetings so far, discussing:

APDO is a growing organisation, and our members work in a wide range of situations, using both general skills and diverse specialisms. In the APDO Book Club, we try to select from quite a broad pool, and you can see that in this list. Decluttering has featured in both our fiction selection (Nancy McGovern's cozy crime) and one of our classic titles (Dana K. White's account of how she won her "never-ending battle with stuff", full of tips for how other people can too). Other classics included Van Nieuwerburgh's Introduction to Coaching Skills. Suggested by members of our training and development team, it provided not only a text but also video content on key techniques coaches use - all of them relevant to our work as professional organisers. We also read Cal Newport's Deep Work, which provides a range of ways that we can change our habits from multi-tasking. As Newport advised: "Don't take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus." Productivity and decluttering both feature in Marie Kondo's latest publication, Joy at Work, co-authored with Scott Sonenshein. Each bestselling author took responsibility for separate chapters, so if you're a fan of both of them, you will love this book. And finally for this update, there's our first business book - Mary Portas's Work Like a Woman. It highlights systemic sexism in big business and suggests ways of building a work life that works - not only for women, but for us all.

The APDO Book Club is one of the many benefits of joining APDO. You can find out more about becoming a member here.

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