Work Clean: The Life-Changing Power of Mise-En-Place to Organize Your Life, Work and Mind

Great chefs maintain a constant if often unconscious awareness of the dual nature of work time: hands-on and hands-off. Immersive time and process time. Creative work and management work. Chefs know the importance of making time to immerse themselves in creative work. But they also understand that some small and tedious tasks have the potential to

Desktop. Because our desktop usually ends up becoming a de facto inbox, sweep it for sticky notes, scraps of paper, and larger items. Dump these items into your desk inbox. Desk inbox. Now that we’ve put our loggable items into our inbox along with what’s already in there, process all these, logging the Action items onto your Action list or calenda

We arrange spaces—and perfect movements within those spaces—to remove resistance. The less friction we have in our work, the easier it is to do, the more we can do, and the quicker we can do it; and thus the more physical and mental energies we can preserve for other things.

Cleaning as you go, not waiting to clean, separated true chefs and cooks from everyone else.

Our chances of success grow when we ask ourselves “What’s finishable?” at the start. We judge the finishable by two parameters: ease and expectation. Ease is time plus energy: How quickly can we finish something, modulated by how much or how little energy we expend in that time? Expectation is deadline plus stakeholders: Who is waiting for our prod

It balances immersive and process time by creating “buckets” of time called Routines.

Kromelow called the technique knolling. Sachs later codified it as follows: Scan your environment for materials, tools, books, etc., which are not in use. Put away everything not in use. If you aren’t sure, leave it out. Group all “like” objects. Align or square all objects to either the surface they rest on, or the studio itself. Sachs made knolli

Inspect and correct happens primarily at a place called the pass, or pass-through, a checkpoint between the kitchen and the dining room. Think of it as the narrowest point in an hourglass, through which all orders from the customers pass through to the cooks, and all dishes pass from the cooks on their way back to the customers. The person who runs

Creating an honesty log will help you understand how much time your regular, recurring tasks actually require.