Mise en Place

In a busy restaurant environment, one detail that separates a cook with solid work experience from someone who can make food taste good is their ability to keep their work station at the ready and operate within a system. Good cooks bring their knives and set up the kitchen's equipment such that they can turn out the menu for their shift without a whole lot of extra effort.

I'm re-reading James Clear's Atomic Habits and he spoke about a guy who was great at this kind of work in his own home to make everything flow better. If he were about to jump in the shower, he'd clean the toilet real quick because that was as good a time as any to give the toilet a wipe. He'd do his dishes after dinner so they'd be ready when he needed them for the next meal, and so on.

This falls into the category of "things we know, but we ignore sometimes."

Mise En Place for Dented People

One of my biggest challenges is something so basic for many people. It takes me a lot of extra effort to do some really basic things like mail a bill. In fact, if paper is involved, it'll take weeks, if ever. In that same category are things like repetitive home-keeping habits. You could look and say I'm lazy. I'd accept that. But what's happening in my brain is more like "I know this needs doing but I have a lot of other higher level functions I want to use my brain and energy for and I can't bring myself to do these seemingly easy and dumb tasks."

But I decided to revisit the idea of mise en place. I use it in lots of little ways.

I haven't been keeping track of hydration, and I think I can do better. This pic shows that I'm measuring it today. I intend to put 6 boxes for tea/water (before someone comes and talks to me about there nutritional wisdom). That will be tomorrow. I know that the current science is that hydration is basically your body weight in pounds divided by 2 in ounces, but if I drink that much water, I'll turn into jello.

This is an example of setting myself up to accomplish a task.

Mise en Place for My Phone

In the modern world, we tend to need our smart device for most jobs we might have. My job is highly linked to rapid response so I can't put my phone on silent mode. I can, however, put certain social media apps on silent, or delete them entirely. I can turn off notifications for email. I can remove any time-wasters from my primary screen of the phone and leave them hidden away, so that I have to make an effort to go get them, but also so that my phone is set up to handle the work I do, not just a driver of distractions.

On Station

In the military, when a vehicle or weapons system is ready to perform its tasks and is in the vicinity of the target, they report that they are "on station." It means basically 'I'm here. I'm operational. I'm ready to do what's asked of me.'

There's no harm nor foul for when someone has to pull themselves back out of operation, as long as they call it out. One slang phrase for this is "I'm Winchester," which often specifically means "I've deployed all the munitions I have at my disposal."

I like thinking of my capabilities in that way. If I prep myself to perform a function (mise en place) and that gets me available to do what I intend to do (on station) faster, then I will be able to perform better at my intended tasks.

Mise en My BELLY!

I drink Cometeer coffee because it comes out to $2 a mug for fancy AF coffee. I take a pint jar (like a canning jar) and fill it with water, plop it in the microwave for 3 minutes, take the frozen little serving out of the freezer, plop it in the jar. Coffee's ready.

BUT I like iced coffee, so I take that jar and put it in the fridge to chill til the next morning. In the morning, when I toss that into my Yeti tumbler with a splash of oat milk, I take a moment, rinse the jar and refill it with water, plop it in the nuke for 3 minutes, and get back to it.

I do this with a lot of foods and beverages now. I drink a lot of water flavored lightly with iced tea (you'd hate it - it's the worst of both worlds). Now, I'm doing - gasp - meal prep. What's so good about that? Well guess what? It's a LOT easier to eat healthy when I've got a whole bunch of grilled up turkey thighs and some bags of broccoli I can heat up quickly, and a shelf full of spices to make it fun and tasty enough. (Before you complain about this part, it's been McDonald's and sub shops the last several years.)

Just Do Little Bits

Look, the thing I know is this. If you want to get all your stuff together in all the parts of your life, do a few bits here and there. ONE way to pick WHICH bits is to think of this mise en place idea, because a cook doesn't set up the entire restaurant. They work at their station. If they're on soup, the set up the soup station. If they're making sides, they get those little slice and dice knives ready to go. You can do the same. Pick where you want to set up and just start there. Leave most of your house messy but get your desk back in usable order. And so on.

With me?

Chris...