Work Clean

Review in 5 bullets (or less):

• I’m an extremely messy person and that sometimes spills over into my work. A mentor of mine recommended this book particularly to help me out with this problem.

• I was skeptical that a single book could solve for years of unorganized working but it delivered!

• So far, only one profession has managed to cultivate an ethos for working efficiently and that’s the culinary arts. Mise-en-place is an organization system that is a way of life for the people that follow it.

• It has three main values - Preparation, Process and Presence. By focusing on these three aspects of working, we can 10x our efficiency.

• The book isn’t preachy and is extremely engaging and I cannot recommend it enough!

Implementable Takeaways

1. Create an honesty log
This is to you track how much time our regular, recurring tasks actually require. So we have a basis for planning and don’t delude ourselves with how much we can/can’t achieve in a given time. This will help us arrive at a “Meeze Point” – the optimal number or tasks/meetings you should have on your calendar.

 2. Create a Daily Meeze Practice
A Daily Meeze is a personal Mise-en-place for your workday, a time to (a) clean your physical and virtual spaces, (b) clear your mind, and (c) plot your day. It’s a 30 minute activity done at the end of everyday that if done consistently, has the power to transform your day. 

3. Get everywhere 15 minutes early
Entering a space calmly, under your own control, and without apology retains your power and dignity. Getting there early applies especially to the appointments you make with yourself because those are the appointments you are least likely to keep—having no one to answer to but yourself.

 4. Audit your tasks
List tasks that you find difficult or resist doing. For each of those tasks, list one action you can take to decrease that resistance. For example, I find that I have a lot of resistance to working out regularly. Setting up a home gym has significantly reduced that resistance.

 5. Creating Routines
Downtime Routines— things to do while waiting for things. If you have the freedom to move, you can exercise, wash dishes etc. If you don’t, you can read a book, return emails etc.
Distraction Routines— things to do when you can’t concentrate or need a break from a particular project.
Route Routines— things to do when you know you are going to be in or passing through a particular place. For example, every time I go to refill my bottle, I try to do a pull up on the bar installed on my doorway!

 6. Avoid perfectionism
Perfectionism stems from two emotional sources: fear of failure, or despair over its impending arrival. And there are two kinds of perfectionists: those who quit their projects, and those who keep working on them forever. Both are afraid, but the former copes by stopping work, and the latter by working indefinitely. Don’t let perfectionism make you miss your moment.

 7. Have inbuilt pause points
Smaller goals lift the spirits because they make it easier for us to see the end. Figure out the discrete parts of each project. Build your pause points with intentionality. Work intently toward those points.

Summary, Notes and Quotes

Mise-en-place is a French phrase translating as “put in place. It’s a tradition of focus and discipline, a method of working and being. Many cooks call it a way of life. The values and behaviors that spring from that chefly system isn’t about cooking, but about achieving excellence.

Three central values:

There are three central values that encapsulate the concept of Mise-en-place. These are Preperation, Process and Presence.

1.    Preparation
Chefs commit to a life where preparation is central, not an add-on or an afterthought. Chef’s plan what they can so they can deal with what they can’t.
The constant for all great chefs and cooks is the effort they put into planning. The result of all that physical and mental energy they devote to planning is excellence and calm execution—in the face of both the expected challenges and the unexpected.

Under planners surrender to time. Over planners fight and curse time. What we need is the chef’s mature sense of honesty about what we can and cannot do with time, and of the consequences of surrendering or fighting something that should just be met squarely. What we need is to work clean with time, where working clean with time means two things. Determining our daily actions Ordering those actions in sequence

2.    Process

Chefs know that success is doing a job right once and then repeating it. The best chefs are always perfecting their processes. Excellence arises from refining.
Chefs train and restrain their movements. Repeated movements result in “muscle memory” that help to reduce the time taken. Chefs also use checklists as a second brain to concretize thinking before movement.

Chefs are always making first moves. Making first moves engages the power of time in two ways and helps us work clean with priorities. First, a first move can serve as a placeholder or a mark. When we don’t have time to execute in the moment, a mark put in the right physical or digital place ensures that we won’t forget an action and can subtly tilt us toward the task to be done. Second, making first moves creates momentum.

For a chef, a dish that is 90 percent finished has the same worth as a dish that is zero percent finished. An accumulation of unfinished actions creates a mental clutter and a brain drain. Hence, a chef is always adopting a finishing mindset.

3.    Presence

Committing to presence means that we cultivate an ability to be deliberate. When you decide to do something, get it done. When you set an appointment with someone else or yourself, show up. When you say “yes,” mean yes. It also means that we cultivate discreteness, boundaries between our work and our personal lives.